Software engineer creates AI that identifies anonymous faces in WWII photos

In a story originally reported by The Times of Israel, a software engineer in New York has created and developed an artificial intelligence that can identify victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

From Number to Names (N2N) uses facial recognition technology to link photos from prewar Europe and the Holocaust to people living today. According to the article, Daniel Patt works on the project in his own time with his own resources, but is being joined by a growing team of engineers, researchers, and data scientists.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there is no single list identifying the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, and that research to find individuals' stories takes a long time. The museum offers a number of ways for survivors and victims' families to get information.

According to The Times of Israel, Patt's inspiration for creating the artificial intelligence came when he visited the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Patt developed N2N in order to help his family and others find photos of murdered loved ones.

According to The Times of Israel, N2N uses hundreds of thousands of photos made available by the USHMM, as well as photos from individual survivors and their descendants. The software only returns the 10 best potential matches that it can find in the database.

All individuals need to do is take a photo from the same time period and post it on the site. Patt's team doesn't make software assertions about the accuracy of the identification, leaving that to the people using the site. Patt told The Times of Israel that they simply show results with similarity scores and let people decide if the results contain a positive identification.

Along with the photos and videos currently available on the site, Patt told The Times of Israel that he is working on getting an additional 600,000 photos from the pre- Holocaust era.

Patt said in the interview that they would like for N2N to become a vehicle for Holocaust education. Students can use the software to help identify faces and artifacts in photo and video archives and possibly discover new connections between living Holocaust descendants and their ancestors

Patt hopes to partner with museums, schools, research institutions, and other organizations which share the same goals around Holocaust education, awareness, and so on.

Patt told The Times of Israel that they had been working on the project for many months. As the last survivors pass, there is an urgent need for this effort to continue. While the survivors are still with us, we hope that N2N can help.