Mail.ru: Faces of Victory

Faces of Victory - a single archive of war-time photos with built-in facial recognition technologies.

2021: Launch English version of the project

Mail.ru Group April 30, 2021 announced the launch of the English version of the project.

Now users from around the world can upload photos of their relatives to the archive, find other previously unknown pictures from the Great Patriotic War and contact their owners.

The Victory Faces project is a digital archive of war times that uses technology machine learning, that combines several ecosystem services:, Mail.ru mail platform, and Mail.ru Cloud Solutions. social networks VKontakte Schoolmates Users can add a photo of their relative to the site and find other archived pictures with it, as well as communicate with photo owners through the postal service or social networks.

We continue to develop a digital archive and use technologies created inside the VK ecosystem to preserve and convey the memory of the heroes of war. Now the project is available to users from other countries - for them we launched an English version of the project, "comments Anna Artamonova, vice president of ecosystem products at Mail.ru Group.

Archived photos analyze Vision facial recognition technology from Mail.ru. Computer vision will find people in the pictures and show what other photos they are in. The program takes into account the features of archival photographs: low quality, damage, black and white color scheme - and can restore them. Even if the photos are taken in different years, Vision will understand that they are the same person, despite age changes, hairstyle changes and other factors.

Everyone who keeps photos of their relatives from the war can take part in the project. To do this, it is enough to upload scans or photos of paper pictures to the archive on the project website or in mini-applications in Odnoklassniki and VKontakte.

In the framework of cooperation with the Victory Museum, the archive will be included in the national historical depository - a digital data bank that stores the histories of the war participants.

2020: Launch of the project "Faces of Victory"

On March 10, Mail.ru Group announced the launch of the Victory Faces project, a single archive of war-time photos with built-in facial recognition technologies. This is a digital archive of the times of war, using machine learning technologies. Thanks to the project, relatives of the war participants will be able to find photos with them and contact the owners of the pictures.

According to the company, the archive is formed from photos uploaded by the users themselves. Thanks to Vision technology from Mail.ru, which analyzes the individual characteristics of individuals and allows you to identify a person by them, project participants will be able to find their family members in photos of other users.

The war rallied many people and forever remained in the memories of those who went through it. However, it was difficult to save and convey the memory of the events of those years before, because photos were not taken as often as in March 2020, and many group pictures remained with someone alone, it was problematic to make copies. Often, it happened that after the war, communication between the front-line soldiers was interrupted, and memorabilia were stored only in one person. Now, veterans and their descendants have the opportunity to restore the lost connection, find photos of their loved ones in the pictures of other people and find out something from the life of their relatives.

The system recognizes people in the picture and can find other photos with them in a few seconds. The program takes into account all the features of archival shots: low quality, black and white color scheme, etc.

The project will give participants from all over the world the opportunity not only to find archival pictures with their family members, but also to communicate with the owners of photographs. You can quickly contact other users through, as Mail.ru mail well as social networks VKontakte and. Schoolmates

"Faces of Victory" continues the tradition of last year's technological project Mail.ru Group, which was also launched on Victory Day. Then we launched the restoration of military photographs using technologies based on neural networks. For March 2020, we are faced with an even larger task - to create a photo archive from the time of the war, in which you can find the missing pages of your family's biography. told Anna Artamonova, vice president of Mail.ru Group

Everyone who keeps photos of their relatives from the war can take part in the project. Scans or photos of paper pictures can be uploaded to the archive on the project website or in a special mini-application in Odnoklassniki and VKontakte. Photo collection starts on March 11, 2020.

The photo archive collected by Mail.ru Group will be included in the National Historical Depository "Faces of Victory," created by the Victory Museum. In the framework of cooperation with the Victory Museum, the company's archive will be included in the nationwide historical depository - a digital data bank that stores the personal stories of millions of war participants. Anyone can learn more about the heroes of the war, whose stories are collected in the depository, at the multimedia exhibition "Faces of Victory."

"Faces of Victory" is a Mail.ru Group project that unites several of the largest ecosystem products. Among them are Post Mail.ru, VKontakte, the platform Mail.ru Cloud Solutions, which provided technological capabilities for the project, as well as Odnoklassniki. They will also promote the project using narrow targeting based on big data - on users who previously posted photos from the shares# Immortal Polk2019 and# Leningrade1941.

Links

Link to the website of the Victory Faces project.