Can Ponga really identify people as they age?

Major milestones in our lives tend to physically change us in predictable ways. Mapping a single person through the various life stages can be tricky, however.

Ponga can't magically predict that a baby will grow up to look like this elderly lady. What it CAN do is match two clear pictures of a baby as the same child. When you use the Gallery function to give match pictures of the elderly lady and those of the baby to the same person, Ponga will look for all pictures like the baby and like the elderly lady and match them to the same person.

As any parent will tell you distinguishing between siblings at the same age can be tricky. We develop more distinguishing characteristics as we age into adolescence and it's not surprising that Ponga becomes more accurate at matching older children and adults in pictures.

What this means is that when you upload your pictures, collecting and naming a range of clear pictures of the same person at different ages will save you time in the long run. Ponga will capture the facial characteristics of each person you name to look for more instances of that person and apply that same name again.

You may have looked like six different people between infancy and old age, but once Ponga has matched a name to that pattern, it can apply that name again in the future.

To minimize errors, we hold the matching of faces to names to a higher standard of confidence when we do it automatically for you. You can always make corrections using the Face Details page and the Change Person function.

For more see How Do I Change a Name I Put to a Face? As always, reach out if you have any questions at all.