Faces are as distinctive as fingerprints and can disclose a lot about our personalities, age, health, and emotions. Numerous face features change as a person grows, as a result of, among other things, various settings, activities, and nutrition. The scientific community has made numerous successful attempts to imitate and comprehend how various people’s face features change with age. The definition of facial progression technology, also known as age progression technology, is the artistic re-rendering of a face with effects of natural aging or rejuvenation at any future age for a specific face. This technology is applicable in a variety of situations, including cross-age face recognition, age estimates, and entertainment. The Face App application, which allowed users to imitate their faces throughout different ages, with the most popular one being the advanced age filter, is one very well-known example that the majority of social media users in the world could be familiar with.
Aside from amusement, face progression software can be utilized in essential applications such as detecting missing children. Finding a missing child after an extended length of time, such as eight or ten years, might be difficult due to considerable changes in face features. Face progression technologies, for example, can assist parents or officials in estimating the change in facial features of a missing child, making it easier for them to be identified.
One institution in Africa, Kenya to be specific, has used AI to its full potential. Lost Child Kenya is enhancing their technique of identifying missing children by utilizing age-progression technologies, specifically face regression. Missing Child Kenya, established in July 2016, is a non-profit community-led effort that uses technology and crowdsourcing to search for, trace, and reunite missing, displaced, lost, and found children. According to Maryana Munyendo, the organization’s founder and executive director, Missing Child Kenya has found and reunited 496 children with their families, committed 73 children to Government homes for safe care and custody, documented 21 children as deceased, and is still looking for another 190, totaling 780 children in the case files.
Missing Child Kenya struck a historic agreement with the Italian Missing Children Institute to give support for forensic imaging, photographic manipulation techniques, facial reconstruction techniques, adult age progression, and photo repair of their missing Kenyan children database. The organization inked a historic cooperation with the Italian Missing Children Institute to give help for forensic imaging, photographic manipulation techniques, facial reconstruction techniques, adult age progression, and photo repair of their database of missing Kenyan children. Applying this method involves updating the mug photographs of the missing youngsters every two years and, for those above the age of 18, every five years. In this approach, it is feasible to disseminate pictures that are age-appropriate for the missing child and so improve the effectiveness of the search. To start the project, the group has so far collaborated with four families. Anita Njeri Nyambura went missing in 2016, and it was the first case that Kenya’s Missing Child Unit dealt with. They collaborated with the family to create photographs of the missing child by imagining how she might have changed over time.
Sources :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsr15ug-7UEhttps://missingchild.co.ke/
https://www.citizen.digital/news/missing-12-year-old-girl-found-dead-n297606