There are some photographs such as that of Aylan Kurdi lying dead on the shores of Turkey that go viral, and yet others are fast forgotten. MIT’s ComputerMIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have created an algorithm they claim can predict how memorable or forgettable an image will be. This new technology can predict how likely a person would be to remember or forget a particular photo 30% better than existing algorithms and within a few percentage points of the average human performance.

CLICK HERE for a free demo of the tool where you can upload your selfie and get a memorability score with a heat map that shows areas that the algorithm finds to be more or less memorable.

The application can be used to improve understanding of how people process visual information and the impact of the information on memory. In the future the application will allow users to tweak images to give greater impact.

CLICK HERE for the research paper to understand the math behind the algorithm