About

Gradient Ethnicity Estimate, also known as Gradient DNA Ancestry is a feature of Gradient app that provides an estimate of a person's ethnic background based on a photograph of their face. Following the introduction of the feature in March 2020, it gained popularity in posts on social media.

Origin

On March 16th, 2020, photo-editing app Gradient^[1] received an update which added that added an "Ethnicity Estimate" feature to the app. The feature provides an estimate of a person's ethnic background based on the photograph of their face (example shown below).

Spread

Starting on that day, users on Twitter and other social networks posted results of the feature being used. For example, on March 16th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @B52yd tweeted an ethnicity estimate of football player Bafétimbi Gomis (shown below, left). The tweet receoved over 350 retweets and 1,300 likes in one week. On March 17th, actress Alexandra Daddario^[3] made a post about the app, with the tweet gaining over 170 retweets and 3,800 likes (shown below, right).

The tweet prompted the further spread of the feature on social media in the following days, with users using the feature on the photographs of themselves and on images of various characters. For example, on March 19th Twitter^[4] user @M4Skie posted the results of the feature used on the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure characters (shown below, right). A March 20th, 2020, meme posted by Turkish football club Beşiktaş J.K.^[5] received over 1,600 retweets and 24,400 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References