#HowOldRobot: Can Microsoft's New Age-Guessing Tool Handle the Original Cast of '90210'?

Kristen Baldwin
·Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo Entertainment
Updated
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Microsoft released a soul-crushing fun new website today, How-Old.net, which calculates your age — with varying degrees of success — after you upload a photo. While there are lots of interesting technical things to say about How-Old.net and its possible applications, we’re going to leave that discussion to our friends at Yahoo Tech — all we care about here at Yahoo TV is this: Can the site accurately guess the ages of one of television’s most age-inappropriate casts ever, Beverly Hills, 90210?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with 90210, first of all, shame on you. Secondly, here’s a refresher: The Fox drama followed a group of friends and frenemies as they dealt with crushes, cliques, and Important Issues at the tony West Beverly High school. While some of the stars were vaguely in the age range of actual high schoolers back in 1990 when the show premiered — Shannen Doherty (19), Jennie Garth (18), Tori Spelling (17), Brian Austin Green (17) — the majority of the ensemble were stretching the limits of chronological believability. From least to most egregious: Jason Priestley, 21; Luke Perry, 26; Ian Ziering, 26; and Gabrielle Carteris, 29 (!). So, how did How-Old.net do with the above photo from 1990′s Season 1? Take a look:

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And for the ladies who the site (inexplicably) skipped, we uploaded another image:

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Ouch. The site thinks Luke Perry was 54??? And poor, fresh-faced Jennie Garth gets 35??? Even Douglas Emerson (the late, lamented Scott Scanlon who accidentally shot himself in Season 1) got the shaft: He was 16 when that photo was taken and yet How-Old.net added 11 years to his age. (Fortunately for the programmers at Microsoft, the site was only four years off on Shannen Doherty.) As How-Old.net’s own disclaimer says, they’re “still improving” the tools — but based on these 90210 results, it may be wise to hold off trying the site yourself until Microsoft makes some improvements, unless you have really high self-esteem.