“Who is this guy? I know I’ve seen him before. I’m going to be preoccupied with his face for the entire movie if I can’t figure out where I know him from!”
If you’re a human, this thought has run through your head more than once. You know the drill — you find yourself searching IMDB for the screen credits of a random actor while you miss important plot points in the movie that was supposed to relax you after a stressful week at work.
“Oh yeah, he had a 10-second conversation with Vince on that episode of Entourage from five years ago.”
Since it’s usually not worth all of that trouble to pull up a C-lister’s résumé, Hulu’s Face Match is coming to rescue you. When the ambitious program is complete, you’ll be able to get the vitals on any actor or actress just by scrolling over their face on the video-streaming website. When you turn it on, the Hulu Face Match Engine can tell you more about the actors in the video the instant they appear,” reads a recent press release from Hulu. “Just hover the mouse over a character’s face, and the video will pause to tell you a little bit more about that guy whose name you just can’t remember… Face Match can help pick out the name of that actor or actress that’s on the tip of your tongue.”
Select programs, such as The Office and Glee, are currently available with Face Match. “Face Match is still very much a work in progress, but we plan to increase the number of faces we recognize in shows and movies as we roll it out,” Hulu says.