Can Text-to-Image Generative Models Accurately Depict Age? A Comparative Study on Synthetic Portrait Generation and Age Estimation

Text-to-image generative models have shown remarkable progress in producing diverse and photorealistic outputs. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of their effectiveness in creating synthetic portraits that accurately represent various demographic attributes, with a special focus on age, nationality, and gender. Our evaluation employs prompts specifying detailed profiles (e.g., Photorealistic selfie photo of a 32-year-old Canadian male), covering a broad spectrum of 212 nationalities, 30 distinct ages from 10 to 78, and balanced gender representation. We compare the generated images against ground truth age estimates from two established age estimation models to assess how faithfully age is depicted. Our findings reveal that although text-to-image models can consistently generate faces reflecting different identities, the accuracy with which they capture specific ages and do so across diverse demographic backgrounds remains highly variable. These results suggest that current synthetic data may be insufficiently reliable for high-stakes age-related tasks requiring robust precision, unless practitioners are prepared to invest in significant filtering and curation. Nevertheless, they may still be useful in less sensitive or exploratory applications, where absolute age precision is not critical.

JAM: A Comprehensive Model for Age Estimation, Verification, and Comparability

This paper introduces a comprehensive model for age estimation, verification, and comparability, offering a comprehensive solution for a wide range of applications. It employs advanced learning techniques to understand age distribution and uses confidence scores to create probabilistic age ranges, enhancing its ability to handle ambiguous cases. The model has been tested on both proprietary and public datasets and compared against one of the top-performing models in the field. Additionally, it has recently been evaluated by NIST as part of the FATE challenge, achieving top places in many categories.