So-called ‘gay face’ has been in the media again this week after a video went viral claiming it existed.
YouTube science teachers Mitch Moffit and Greg Brown cited controversial research that found gay people have different physical features than their straight counterparts.
Their claims that AI could be trained to recognise someone’s sexuality were picked up in newspaper reports – but experts in the field said they strongly doubted this was reliable.
Dominic Lees, a professor specialising in AI at the University of Reading, said Moffit and Brown had not carried out any original research, but had only reviewed earlier studies.
He told Metro: ‘Those studies have clearly not been peer-reviewed. An academic review of the work would point out that every image shown is of a white person’s face, despite the report’s claims to make universal observations about “gay face”.
‘On this issue alone, the report cannot be trusted. Physiognomy varies …