Face photo-based age acceleration predicts all-cause mortality and differs among occupations

Abstract

While scientists argue what aging is and what drives aging, it is widely accepted that our face changes drastically with age and that mortality increases in late life. We hypothesize that people of the same age can be biologically older than others and that the human face may reflect accelerated molecular aging. To test this hypothesis we examine the associations of face photo-based age acceleration with mortality and lifestyle. For this purpose, we trained and tested artificial intelligence models on 442,110 photos of famous people. We found that face photo-based age predicts all-cause mortality for middle-aged and older individuals meaning that those age faster based on their face photo die sooner. We also found that, based on face photos, sport is the slowest aging occupation among famous people consistently to previous findings showing the benefits of exercise to epigenetic aging. Overall, we demonstrate that the face photo-base age model approaches biological age in some extent and provides a low-cost and fast complementary measurement for personalized medicine, as well as aging and rejuvenation studies. The model is available for demonstration and academic research purposes at https://photoage.sztaki.hu/.