People seeking marriage can zero-in on life partners resembling celebrities who torment them in their sleep - with the help of a new facial search technology available on marriage portal www.bharatmatrimony.com.
The face recognition technology works on the dimensions of a celebrity's face, measures distances between the various features and matches these with photos on the matrimony portal.
The technology is similar to the face restructuring technology used by the police department. The difference: the hunt here is for a dream life-partner.
"This is our attempt to go beyond the normal search options like caste, religion, age, profession and others. Many people would wish to marry a person who looks like a celebrity. It is this need we try to satisfy now," Murugavel Janakiraman, founder and chief executive of Consim Info that owns the site told IANS.
According to Janakiraman, the company had been working on this project for the past six months to iron out glitches before formally launching it Tuesday.
All the 15 Indian language matrimony portals owned by Consim Info will initially have this facial search facility, which could be added to other matrimony portal variants like elitematrimony.com, he said.
{{/usCountry}}All the 15 Indian language matrimony portals owned by Consim Info will initially have this facial search facility, which could be added to other matrimony portal variants like elitematrimony.com, he said.
{{/usCountry}}Almost 50 per cent of the 15 million members on the chain of bharatmatrimony portals have uploaded their pictures, Janakiraman said.
The Consim information team contended that during the trial period, it was found the popularity of a celebrity depended on their topicality.
"While Aishwarya Rai seems to be favourite for majority of searches, actress Asin has gained more popularity after Ghajini's release.
Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bhindra was at the top for some period and now AR Rahman is the favourite among girls," said a Consim official.
One of the rub-off benefit of this search facility is that members will certainly feel happy if their face pops-ups resemble some celebrity.
However, searchers may also be in for shock as the technology is basically based on geometrical dimensions of a face. For instance, a search may throw up the picture of a woman resembling Aishwarya Rai - without her hour-glass figure - dashing the searcher's dreams.
But Janakiraman ruled out a search factoring in the body specs. "We will host line drawing images of celebrities' faces only."