Biometric face recognition software has helped resolve an online debate spurred by a viral image that looked like either Tom Hanks or Bill Murray, depending on your perspective.In a tussle that resembled the white or gold dress debate in 2014, people had been divided over a photo shared by the Facebook group “Reasons My Son Is Crying”.Although the poster identified the man standing with a crying toddler as Bill Murray at the famed St. Andrews golf links in Scotland, thousands disagreed an insisted it was Tom Hanks.The BBC reported that the mother of the boy in the picture had confirmed that it was indeed Murray, but not before face recognition software also made the same link.Atlantic magazine contacted Pinar Yanardag, a computer engineer at MIT who specializes in machine learning, about the issue.Yanardag said that while there wasn't time to use machine learning methods, that a simple face recognition algorithm would work. Yanardag cut out a tiny square of the photo-just enough to include the actor's eyes and nose-and uploaded that excerpted image to Google.”In this case, it reveals the picture as Bill Murray,” she wrote in an email. “Quite surprising to me since I thought he was Tom Hanks.”
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