Version: 4.0.0

Age Estimation

This guide demonstrates how to perform Age Estimation with Phonexia Speech Platform 4. You can find a high-level description in the About Age Estimation article. The technology can estimate age of a speaker in audio files or in voiceprints. This guide will show you how to do both.

For testing, we'll use recordings in different languages and by both male and female speakers. You can download them all together in the audio_files.zip archive.

filename	age	filename	age	filename	age
Adedewe.wav	46	Lenka.wav	32	Tatiana.wav	29
Dina.wav	37	Lubica.wav	30	Thida.wav	32
Fadimatu.wav	47	Luka.wav	31	Tuan.wav	29
Harry.wav	43	Nirav.wav	27	Xiang.wav	36
Juan.wav	27	Noam.wav	25	Zoltan.wav	31
Julia.wav	26	Obioma.wav	36

note

Note that obtained age is approximate and is estimated within +/- 10 years precision, i.e. age - 10 <= age_estimated <= age + 10.

At the end of this guide, you'll find the full Python code example that combines all the steps that will first be discussed separately. This guide should give you a comprehensive understanding on how to integrate Age Estimation in your own projects.

Prerequisites

In the guide, we assume that the Virtual Appliance is running on port 8000 of http://localhost and contains a proper model and license for the technology. For more information on how to install and start the Virtual Appliance, please refer to the Virtual Appliance Installation chapter.

Environment Setup

We are using Python 3.9 and Python library requests 2.27 in this example. You can install the requests library with pip as follows:

pip install requests~=2.27

Basic Age Estimation from file

To run Age Estimation for a single media file, you should start by sending a POST request to the /api/technology/age-estimation endpoint. In Python, you can do this as follows:

import requests

SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER = "http://localhost:8000"  # Replace with your actual server URL
ENDPOINT_URL = f"{SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER}/api/technology/age-estimation"

audio_path = "Adedewe.wav"

with open(audio_path, mode="rb") as file:
    files = {"file": file}
    response = requests.post(
        url=ENDPOINT_URL,
        files=files,
    )
    print(response.status_code)  # Should print '202'

If the task has been successfully accepted, the 202 code will be returned together with a unique task ID in the response body. The task isn't processed immediately, but only scheduled for processing. You can check the current task status by polling for the result.

The URL for polling the result is returned in the Location header. Alternatively, you can assemble the polling URL on your own by appending a slash (/) and the task ID to the endpoint URL.

import time

polling_url = response.headers["Location"]  # Use the `response` from the previous step
# Alternatively:
# polling_url = ENDPOINT_URL + "/" + response.json()["task"]["task_id"]

while True:
    response = requests.get(polling_url)
    data = response.json()
    task_status = data["task"]["state"]
    if task_status in {"done", "failed", "rejected"}:
        break
    time.sleep(5)
print(f"{data=}")

Once the polling finishes, data will contain the latest response from the server - either the result of Age Estimation, or an error message with details, in case processing was not able to finish properly.

The result contains information about individual input audio channels which can be identified by their channel_number. The speech_length field shows how much speech was used for producing the age estimation which is shown in age field.

The following JSON shows the result of a successful Age Estimation task for the Adedewe.wav file which shows that the age was estimated as 46 years (+/- 10 years) for the first channel.

{
  "task": {
    "task_id": "db414429-2b56-46b2-bf53-51e2a813b6da",
    "state": "done"
  },
  "result": {
    "channels": [
      {
        "channel_number": 0,
        "speech_length": 30.88,
        "age": 46
      }
    ]
  }
}

Age Estimation from voiceprints

Age Estimation can be performed on voiceprints extracted from audio files with the Voiceprint Extraction technology.

For testing, we'll be using voiceprints extracted from the test recordings that you can find in the voiceprints.zip archive.

To run Age Estimation for a set of voiceprints, you should start by sending a POST request to the /api/technology/age-estimation-voiceprints endpoint. In Python, you can do this as follows:

SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER = "http://localhost:8000"  # Replace with your actual server URL
VOICEPRINTS_ENDPOINT_URL = f"{SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER}/api/technology/age-estimation-voiceprints"

voiceprint_paths = [
    "Adedewe.vp",
    "Dina.vp",
    "Fadimatu.vp",
    "Harry.vp",
    "Juan.vp",
    "Julia.vp",
    "Lenka.vp",
    "Lubica.vp",
    "Luka.vp",
    "Nirav.vp",
    "Noam.vp",
    "Obioma.vp",
    "Tatiana.vp",
    "Thida.vp",
    "Tuan.vp",
    "Xiang.vp",
    "Zoltan.vp",
]

voiceprints = []
for path in voiceprint_paths:
    with open(path) as f:
        voiceprints.append(f.read())

response = requests.post(
    url=VOICEPRINTS_ENDPOINT_URL,
    json={"voiceprints": voiceprints},

print(f"{response.status_code=}")  # Should print 'response.status_code=202'

After polling for the result as in the previous example, we'll get the following output (shortened here). The voiceprint_scores come in the same order as the input voiceprints. Notice that the result for Adedewe.vp is exactly the same as when estimated from audio file.

{
  "task": {
    "task_id": "26776c99-ac92-4df0-a0f3-3beb1498f4ee",
    "state": "done"
  },
  "result": {
    "voiceprint_scores": [
      {
        "speech_length": 30.88,
        "age": 46
      },
      {
        "speech_length": 19.52,
        "age": 37
      },
      {
        "speech_length": 23.84,
        "age": 47
      },
      ...
    ]
  }
}

Full Python Code

Here is the full example on how to run the Age Estimation technology with both files and voiceprints as input data. The code is slightly adjusted and wrapped into functions.

The scores_from_file.json and scores_from_voiceprints.json files contain the results of the Age Estimation. Notice that the results are identical except for the filename extensions (wav vs vp) and the extra channel_number information in scores_from_file.json.

import json
import requests
import time

SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER = "http://localhost:8000"  # Replace with your actual server URL
ENDPOINT_URL = f"{SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER}/api/technology/age-estimation"
VOICEPRINTS_ENDPOINT_URL = f"{SPEECH_PLATFORM_SERVER}/api/technology/age-estimation-voiceprints"

def poll_result(polling_url: str, sleep: int = 5):
    while True:
        response = requests.get(polling_url)
        response.raise_for_status()
        data = response.json()
        task_status = data["task"]["state"]
        if task_status in {"done", "failed", "rejected"}:
            break
        time.sleep(sleep)
    return response


def run_age_estimation_from_file(audio_path: str):
    with open(audio_path, mode="rb") as f:
        files = {"file": f}
        response = requests.post(
            url=ENDPOINT_URL,
            files=files,
        )
        response.raise_for_status()
    polling_url = response.headers["Location"]
    age_estimation_response = poll_result(polling_url)
    return age_estimation_response.json()


def run_age_estimation_from_voiceprints(voiceprint_paths: list[str]):
    voiceprints = []
    for path in voiceprint_paths:
        with open(path) as f:
            voiceprints.append(f.read())

    response = requests.post(
        url=VOICEPRINTS_ENDPOINT_URL,
        json={"voiceprints": voiceprints},
    )
    response.raise_for_status()

    polling_url = response.headers["Location"]
    age_estimation_response = poll_result(polling_url)
    return age_estimation_response.json()


# Run Age Estimation from audio files
filenames = [
    "Adedewe.wav",
    "Dina.wav",
    "Fadimatu.wav",
    "Harry.wav",
    "Juan.wav",
    "Julia.wav",
    "Lenka.wav",
    "Lubica.wav",
    "Luka.wav",
    "Nirav.wav",
    "Noam.wav",
    "Obioma.wav",
    "Tatiana.wav",
    "Thida.wav",
    "Tuan.wav",
    "Xiang.wav",
    "Zoltan.wav",
]

results = {}
for filename in filenames:
    print(f"Running Age Estimation for file {filename}.")
    data = run_age_estimation_from_file(filename)
    # The files are mono recordings, so we access the result in the first channel (index 0).
    result = data["result"]["channels"][0]
    results[filename] = result
    print(f"The result for {filename} is: {result}")

# Save the results to a file.
with open("scores_from_file.json", "w") as output:
    json.dump(results, output, indent=2)


# Run Age Estimation from voiceprints
voiceprint_paths = [
    "Adedewe.vp",
    "Dina.vp",
    "Fadimatu.vp",
    "Harry.vp",
    "Juan.vp",
    "Julia.vp",
    "Lenka.vp",
    "Lubica.vp",
    "Luka.vp",
    "Nirav.vp",
    "Noam.vp",
    "Obioma.vp",
    "Tatiana.vp",
    "Thida.vp",
    "Tuan.vp",
    "Xiang.vp",
    "Zoltan.vp",
]

print(f"Running Age Estimation for {len(voiceprint_paths)} voiceprints.")
data = run_age_estimation_from_voiceprints(voiceprint_paths)
result_from_voiceprints = data["result"]["voiceprint_scores"]
# Map the results to input voiceprint names.
results_per_voiceprint = {
    filename: result
    for filename, result in zip(voiceprint_paths, result_from_voiceprints)
}

print(f"The results are: {result_from_voiceprints}")

# Save the results to a file.
with open("scores_from_voiceprints.json", "w") as output:
    json.dump(results_per_voiceprint, output, indent=2)

Prerequisites​

Environment Setup​

Basic Age Estimation from file​

Age Estimation from voiceprints​

Full Python Code​

Prerequisites

Environment Setup

Basic Age Estimation from file

Age Estimation from voiceprints

Full Python Code