Shelley Murphy and Hiawatha Bray report in the Boston Globe (temp link) that face recognition software failed 38% of the time in a test at Logan Airport.

On the other hand, I’ve always thought there ought to be many more doubles than there are since there aren’t that many variables to play with. But, apparently I’m wrong since we can almost always tell celebrity lookalikes apart, and they’re professionals. Nature seems to have made us sensitive to faces the way other animals are sensitive to smells.

Here are some snaps from some sites offering lookalikes, including the #1 at google when you search on “celebrity lookalikes”. (The other page is lookalike.com.) Can you guess who they’re supposed to be? The answers are the ALT values of each image, so hold your mouse over the image for a second to see the answer. (And do dogs have celebrity smell-alikes?)

Categories: misc dw