During its Build 2015 developers conference, Microsoft revealed a simple website that uses the company's face recognition APIs to give an illustration of what is possible with its facial recognition technology. However, we thoroughly advise giving it a miss if you don't want to be insulted.

How-old.net - or How Old Do I Look, to give it its full name - let's you upload a photo of yourself or someone else and find out the estimated age of the subject based on Microsoft algorithms. It also guesses the gender of the person or persons in the picture. And so far, it hasn't got it right in our tests. Not once.

Worse still, it has consistently added several years to each person we've uploaded. So if you are sensitive about your age, whatever you do, do not go to how-old.net.

Admittedly, Microsoft does include a disclaimer, claiming that the technology is in an early research and development phase so is being refined. It is also not necessarily designed simply to guess people's age or gender, indeed it's best use could be to group images featuring the same people automatically, but the how-old webpage is a potentially more fun way to show it off.

Fun, that is, until you end up running to the bathroom crying over finding out that you look in your mid-fifties when you are not.