Eyes Closed in Photos? Facebook AI Can 'Open' Them

Say Cheese! Click! It's a common problem with having your photo taken: Your grin is wide but your eyes are shut tight as soon as the flash goes off.

A pair of Facebook engineers have developed a solution to this common annoyance, an artificial intelligence tool that can open closed eyes in photographs, Mashable reports. 

The Facebook engineers revealed the details of how they developed the tool in a research paper released this week.

The artificial intelligence is trained by being shown numerous photos of people with their eyes open. It then scrutinizes the details of the photos and uses the data gathered to transfer opened eyes onto a photo with someone blinking, taking into account variables like lighting.

While this is exciting news for many (Finally! A way to salvage those awkward yearbook and wedding photos), others could see it as a bit invasive, given the biometric data being used.

Facebook has been in hot water over it's advanced facial recognition tool, which can identify a user's face anywhere across the site. Users had to opt out of the feature, rather than opt in. The eye-painting tool could garner similar concern, depending on how it is introduced to Facebook users and how transparent the social media giant is about the data gathering it involves.

You won't be able to fix your blinking pics tomorrow, however. The tool is still in the research phase. But keep your eyes open for it in the future.