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Datasets About
Labeled Faces in The Wild (LFW) is the first facial recognition dataset created entirely from online photos
It includes 13,456 images of 4,432 people's images copied from the Internet during 2002-2004 and is the most frequently used dataset in the world for benchmarking face recognition algorithms.
Created
2002 – 2004
Images
13,233
Identities
5,749
Origin
Yahoo! News Images
Used by
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, Tencent, SenseTime, Face++, CIA, NSA, IARPA
Website
  • There are about 3 men for every 1 woman in the LFW dataset 1
  • The person with the most images is George W. Bush with 530
  • There are about 3 George W. Bush's for every 1 Tony Blair
  • The LFW dataset includes over 500 actors, 30 models, 10 presidents, 124 basketball players, 24 football players, 11 kings, 7 queens, and 1 Moby
  • In all 3 of the LFW publications [^lfw_original_paper], [^lfw_survey], [^lfw_tech_report] the words "ethics", "consent", and "privacy" appear 0 times
  • The word "future" appears 71 times
  • * denotes partial funding for related research

Labeled Faces in the Wild

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Labeled Faces in The Wild (LFW) is "a database of face photographs designed for studying the problem of unconstrained face recognition 1. It is used to evaluate and improve the performance of facial recognition algorithms in academic, commercial, and government research. According to BiometricUpdate.com 3, LFW is "the most widely used evaluation set in the field of facial recognition, LFW attracts a few dozen teams from around the globe including Google, Facebook, Microsoft Research Asia, Baidu, Tencent, SenseTime, Face++ and Chinese University of Hong Kong."

The LFW dataset includes 13,233 images of 5,749 people that were collected between 2002-2004. LFW is a subset of Names of Faces and is part of the first facial recognition training dataset created entirely from images appearing on the Internet. The people appearing in LFW are...

The Names and Faces dataset was the first face recognition dataset created entire from online photos. However, Names and Faces and LFW are not the first face recognition dataset created entirely "in the wild". That title belongs to the UCD dataset. Images obtained "in the wild" means using an image without explicit consent or awareness from the subject or photographer.

The Names and Faces dataset was the first face recognition dataset created entire from online photos. However, Names and Faces and LFW are not the first face recognition dataset created entirely "in the wild". That title belongs to the UCD dataset. Images obtained "in the wild" means using an image without explicit consent or awareness from the subject or photographer.

All 5,379 people in the Labeled Faces in The Wild Dataset. Showing one face per person
All 5,379 people in the Labeled Faces in The Wild Dataset. Showing one face per person

The Names and Faces dataset was the first face recognition dataset created entire from online photos. However, Names and Faces and LFW are not the first face recognition dataset created entirely "in the wild". That title belongs to the UCD dataset. Images obtained "in the wild" means using an image without explicit consent or awareness from the subject or photographer.

The Names and Faces dataset was the first face recognition dataset created entire from online photos. However, Names and Faces and LFW are not the first face recognition dataset created entirely "in the wild". That title belongs to the UCD dataset. Images obtained "in the wild" means using an image without explicit consent or awareness from the subject or photographer.

Biometric Trade Routes

To help understand how LFW has been used around the world for commercial, military and academic research; publicly available research citing Labeled Faces in the Wild is collected, verified, and geocoded to show the biometric trade routes of people appearing in the images. Click on the markers to reveal reserach projects at that location.

Who used LFW?

This bar chart presents a ranking of the top countries where dataset citations originated. Mouse over individual columns to see yearly totals. These charts show at most the top 10 countries.

Supplementary Information

Dataset Citations

The dataset citations used in the visualizations were collected from Semantic Scholar, a website which aggregates and indexes research papers. Each citation was geocoded using names of institutions found in the PDF front matter, or as listed on other resources. These papers have been manually verified to show that researchers downloaded and used the dataset to train or test machine learning algorithms.

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Commercial Use

Add a paragraph about how usage extends far beyond academia into research centers for largest companies in the world. And even funnels into CIA funded research in the US and defense industry usage in China.

Research, text, and graphics ©Adam Harvey / megapixels.cc