Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) Age Estimation & Verification
API | Participation Agreement | Validation | Encryption | Submit
Status
[2023-08-17] An updated version of the API and test plan has been posted.
Overview
Facial age verification has recently been mandated in legislation in a number of jurisdictions. These laws are typically intended to protect minors from various harms by verifying that the individual is above a certain age. Less commonly some applications extend benefits to groups below a certain age. Further use-cases seek only to determine actual age. The mechanism for estimating age is usually not specified in legislation. Face analysis using software is one approach, and is attractive when a photograph is available or can be captured.
In 2014, NIST published a NISTIR 7995 on Performance of Automated Age Estimation. The report showed using a database with 6 million images, the most accurate age estimation algorithm have accurately estimated 67% of the age of a person in the images within five years of their actual age, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 4.3 years. Since then, more research has dedicated to further improve the accuracy in facial age verification.
This track of the Face Analysis Techolongy Evaluation - FATE Age Estimation And Verification (AEV) – is an ongoing evaluation of software algorithms that inspect photos and videos of a face to produce an age estimate. The output of this track is a set of reports on the accuracy and computational efficiency of algorithms. As with other FRTE and FATE evaluations, this track of FATE is open to a worldwide community of developers. This evaluation is conducted on an ongoing basis in that the evaluation remains open indefinitely such that developers may submit their algorithms to NIST whenever they are ready, but no more frequently than four calendar months.
How to Participate
To participate in this evaluation, developers need to submit a participation
agreement to NIST, wrap their software behind the published C++ API, run their
libraries through the provided validation package (which creates a submission
package), encrypt the package, and provide a download link for the encrypted
submission package.
[Participation agreement] FATE is conducted by NIST, an agency of the United States Government. Participation is free of charge. FATE is open to a global audience of face recognition developers. All organizations who seek to participate in FATE must sign all pages of this Participation Agreement and submit it with their algorithm submission using the Submission Form. [last update: 2023-08-17]
[API] General and common information shared between all tracks of the FRTE/FATE evaluations are documented in a General Evaluation Specifications, which includes hardware and operating system environment, software requirements, reporting, and common data structures that support the APIs. [last update: 2023-08-17]
[Validation] A validation package has been published. All participants must run their software through the validation package prior to submission. The purpose of validation is to ensure consistent algorithm output between your execution and NIST’s execution. [last update: 2023-08-17]
[Encryption] All submissions must be properly encrypted and signed before transmission to NIST. This must be done according to these instructions using the FATE Ongoing public key linked from this page. Participants must email their public key to NIST. The participant’s public key must correspond to the participant’s public-key fingerprint provided on the signed Participation Application. [last update: 2022-07-03]
[Submission] All algorithm submissions must be submitted through the Submission Form, which requires encrypted files be provided as a download link from a generic http server (e.g., Google Drive). We cannot accept Dropbox links. NIST will not register, or establish any kind of membership, on the provided website. Participants can submit their algorithm(s), participation agreement, and GPG key at the same time via the submission form. [last update: 2023-07-03]
Participants must subscribe to the evaluation mailing list to receive emails when new reports are published or announcements are made.