Google Tests Face Detection Technologies

As part of improving its image detection and ranking algorithm and as a result of Google’s acquisition of Neven Vision back in July of 2006, who specializes in object detection in images, Google enabled a new search variable in its SERPS. The variable &imgtype= is, so far, enabled for the inputs “face” and “news“.

For example a regular image search for the term Bahama gives the following results:

While a search with the added “face” variable gives a whole bunch of faces of people:

Lastly, the input “news” returns all recent news related images from recent stories:

[via GOOGLESYSTEM]