Do you recognize the right-wing and the liberal? AI predicts people’s politics by analyzing a single selfie

The “pink-haired liberal” has become something of a stereotype, but AI can now predict a person’s politics based solely on their appearance.

A new program can detect tiny nuances in people’s facial features related to their political leanings – with an accuracy of more than 70 percent.

Training was done on hundreds of photos and voting behavior of Americans.

The results showed that liberals tended to have smaller lower faces, their chins were smaller, and their lips and noses turned down, while conservatives had larger, broader facial features in the lower half of their faces.

Dr. Michal Kosinski, the lead author of the study, warned that facial recognition tools are dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands because millions of people’s information could be accessed without their consent.

Former President Donald Trump – conservative (left) and President Joe Biden – liberal (right). Trump has a wider jawline than Biden, whose lower face is narrower and the telltale, slightly downturned lips that would mark him as a liberal

American conservative political commentator Candace Owens (left) and liberal television host Oprah Winfrey (right). Owen’s lower face is slightly wider than Winfrey’s, which is smaller and has a more pointed angle

Kosinski and his team looked at expressionless facial images of 591 participants and natural images of 3,400 politicians from the US, Britain and Canada and found that a predictive model could accurately distinguish the person’s political orientation.

The research provides further insight into how facial recognition can be used to distinguish a person’s private information from a Facebook photo, even if that person has not posted their views online.

“Our findings underscore the urgency for scientists, the public and policymakers to recognize and address the potential risks of facial recognition technology to personal privacy,” the study warned.

“Even more worrying, these algorithms can identify personal characteristics that have until now been widely considered unrecognizable from faces,” it added.

Kosinski told Fox News Digital that “algorithms can be applied to millions of people very easily and quickly and cheaply” and that the study is “more of a cautionary tale” about the technology “that’s in your phone and widely used everywhere.” ‘

The study had participants complete a political orientation questionnaire that asked whether they tend to vote for more liberal or conservative political candidates and whether they believe they have one political preference over another.

They were also asked to indicate the extent to which they consider themselves liberal or conservative.

Roseanne Barr (left) is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and spoke out at a conservative event in December. Taylor Swift – Democrat (right) supported Joe Biden during the last presidential election. Barr’s wider smile goes straight through, indicating that she is conservative, while Swift has smaller, lower facial features and angular lips

Kid Rock (left) is a self-identified conservative who has come under fire for encouraging other conservatives to boycott Bud Light after it teamed up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Lin-Manuel Miranda – Democrat (right) supported Joe Biden in the last presidential election. Kid Rock’s wider face would identify him as conservative versus Miranda’s smaller facial features

After completing the 100-item questionnaire, participants were photographed wearing a black T-shirt, removing all jewelry, shaving their facial hair or removing makeup (if necessary), and pulling their hair back so that the software only applied to their face could focus.

The VGGFace2 – an AI facial recognition software created in 2017 – was used to examine the images and determine the participant’s facial features by comparing them to other images stored in a database.

Aside from the projected contours of conservative versus liberal faces, the study found that all other ‘contours and faces are virtually identical, revealing no other obvious differences between liberals and conservatives, including in facial expression, grooming, skin color or head orientation .’

The findings took into account other factors such as participants’ age, gender and ethnicity, but researchers found that the link between the person’s political preferences was based solely on their facial features.

This follows a separate study Kosinski conducted in 2021 that found the VGGFace2 software could identify a person as liberal or conservative with 70 percent accuracy.

At the time, he couldn’t determine exactly which characteristics were associated with the person’s political beliefs, but found that trends, such as when someone looked directly into the camera, were labeled as liberal, while those who showed disgust were determined to be conservative.

Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump appear to fit the identifying characteristics alongside conservative celebrities like Kid Rock and Roseanne Barr versus liberal celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Taylor Swift.

The facial features of the celebrities match the features due to conservatives’ larger lower faces, while liberals are much smaller in comparison and are more likely to have down-curved lips and noses.

The researchers used a standardized facial image (photo) in the study to represent the face of a person identified as conservative

The study focused on 590 participants who completed a 100-item questionnaire about their political beliefs and other information about age, gender and ethnicity. The researchers found that facial features played a primary role in identifying their political orientation

DailyMail.com contacted Dr. Michal Kosinski for comments.