Information Technology and History: Digital archive of war photographs with face recognition technology launched

Mail.ru launched the "Faces of Victory" project - a unified archive of war photographs with implemented face recognition technology. This is the first digital archive of the war materials in the world, that uses machine learning technologies. The project provides the opportunity of the war veterans' relatives to find veterans' photographs and contact the owners of the images. The project will become a part of the "Faces of Victory" National historical depository created by the Victory Museum.

The archive includes photographs uploaded by users. Project participants will have an opportunity to find their family members in photographs of other users thanks to the Vision technology of Mail.ru, which analyzes the individual characteristics of individuals.

The system recognizes people in the picture and can find other photographs with them in a few seconds. The program considers all the features of archived images: low quality, black and white color scheme, etc.

The project provides the communication of the photographs' owners. The users can quickly contact each other using Mail.ru, as well as social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.

The project is open for anyone who has photographs of war veterans. Scans or photos of images can be downloaded to the archive on the project's website or in a special mobile application in Odnoklassniki and VK Mini Apps. The collection of photographs was launched on March 11, 2020.