back to article AWS launches celebrity-spotting-as-a-service: What a time to be alive

At last - a cloud service that will get the unwashed masses excited about cloud: Amazon Web Services has added celebrity-spotting-as-a-service to its cloud. AWS has been doing this stuff since late 2016 when it launched “Rekognition”, a service that offered “deep learning-based image recognition” and therefore the chance to “ …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My god man, I've not even had my breakfast yet.

    I need eye bleach pronto.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Eye will not be enough

      You should start with mind bleach.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    What about buttocks recognition? Maybe it would work better!

    Didn't the Grease movie say FBI had experts in the field? So it's not new technology!

    1. MrDamage Silver badge

      Re: What about buttocks recognition? Maybe it would work better!

      That was for a blue moon, not a greasy Uranus.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: What about buttocks recognition? Maybe it would work better!

      You don't need a computer to recognise an ass...

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Am I missing something here?

    Surely a celebrity is someone who doesn't need machine assistance to be recognised?

    1. Alumoi Silver badge

      Re: Am I missing something here?

      Depends on the celebrity. Thre are a lot of national celebrities a foreigner would fail to recognize.

      Also, who the f... is this Kardasian we are talking about?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Am I missing something here?

        I think Kardashian is the the name of the latest generation Intel processors.

        1. Anonymous Custard
          Alien

          Re: Am I missing something here?

          Weren't they some of the ugly buggers in Star Trek a few years back?

  4. jake Silver badge

    The least you could do ...

    ,,, is use a picture of somebody good looking. C'mon, ElReg, you're letting down the side!

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Terminator

      Re: The least you could do ...

      Yes, like Sarah Connor.

  5. Adam 52 Silver badge

    And there we go then

    Now that the genie is out of the bottle, they'll all be releasing tools. At the moment it's limited to "celebrities", whoever they are, but Joe Bloggs is inevitable now.

    Coupled with the huge image libraries that Google Photos, Amazon Drive and Facebook have privacy has just taken a huge leap backwards.

    Give Google their due, they've had this product for years and not released it because they were concerned about the privacy implications (or too many people asking questions about their treasure chest of images).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And there we go then

      Oh, the software is "easy" to design and program to some degree.

      Having the data to test/train it and refine the accuracy and error bars is the hard part.

      Google have both.

  6. Christoph

    So anyone who has the misfortune to resemble a celebrity closely enough to fool the recognition will be endlessly stalked by people who are convinced that the computer can't get it wrong.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: misfortune to resemble a celebrity ...

      ... is the least of your worries. I'm going to have people on the train thinking Anders Breivik has escaped ...

  7. Emmeran

    For years I struggled with having Bruce Willis look like me, it gets annoying fast. I resolved the issue by taking a career in IT and thus gaining a shit load of fat to buffer the resemblance.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      For years I struggled with having Bruce Willis look like me

      I know what you mean. My face looks just like that Kardashian's arse, so I tried to solve that by shaving off my beard and moustache and never saying the word 'oh'.

      Imagine my horror when she did exactly the same.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Will El Reg come under Theresa May's Internet Censorship? Age Verification?

    Look El Reg, if you're looking to come (not the best turn of phrase) under Theresa May's* doctorine of purantanical internet censorship, you're going the right about it.

    I'm at that stage in life where I'm beginning to forget my age (thirties) and I have enough passwords to remember as it is.

    Still, I prefer the pint pulling version of Kim.

    *I imagined Miss Piggy with short hair, and got Theresa May.

  9. Korev Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Faded celebs too?

    What about faded has beens? "Asking for a friend"

    1. Mr Sceptical
      Terminator

      Re: Faded celebs too?

      There'll be some kind of ranking system in effect, so results will be returned in order of social meeja standings....

      e.g.

      1. Sebastian Vettel (F1 driver)

      2. Philip J Fry (Futurama)

      Personally, I think Seb is Fry's German accented, racecar driving alter ego, but I can't prove it yet!

      Icon because Bender.

  10. earl grey
    Mushroom

    NSFW would help

    thanks, but i have to go clear cache and files and who knows what all. I can't afford to have that seen on my work computer.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: NSFW would help

      Yes, that's a buttabyte sized pic, right there!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: NSFW would help

      Thing is, you know it's some poor persons job to look at that butt all day long!

      1. Charles 9

        Re: NSFW would help

        But that person could have a butt fetish, so he may not find it bad at all.

  11. Scott 53

    Will it auto-cancel when the 'celebrity' dies?

    I'm hoping so as my entry on the looky-likey board has always been Ian Brady

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The next step..

    So we now have a tool that can look at a photo and identify the celeb. How long before it looks at a photo and identifies the civilian from their social media?

    Go out for a quiet drink and see someone nice, take a quick photo and before you know it you're a Facebook stalker.

  13. Herby

    Will it return...

    ...not found for those "celebrities" that have fallen out of favor, or who really shouldn't be "celebrities" in the first place. Maybe that is why it gave the wrong name.

    Maybe AWS has an alternative motive in the first place.

    Of course the real reason things like this exist is to allow us "normal" people to know just who they look like that is "famous". Yeah, that's the ticket.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Will it return...

      I expect AWS will charge for rankings. The only slebs we will be able to identify are the ones who want to pay to be recognisable.

      So no change there then.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Will it return...

        What about the celebs OTHERS pay to be recognizable?

  14. adnim
    Joke

    AWS launches celebrity-spotting-as-a-disservice

    FTFY

  15. T. F. M. Reader

    Pre-Awards???

    dangerously disruptive to pre-awards-ceremony red carpet interviewers

    That's nothing! How about the actual awards ceremonies? Just imagine Warren Beatty getting a sponsored-AI-assisted second chance at the next Oscars! Just to eliminate a repeat of a human error, you see...

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