Most mothers and fathers will have wondered what their children will grow up to look like and now a new app could take all the guess work out of the equation.
The revolutionary software, which was originally designed to identify potential terrorists in busy crowds, has already been used to predict the future appearance of celebrity offspring including Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Harper Beckham and Eric Cowell.
Now the creator, Professor Hassan Ugail, head of Bradford University's Centre for Visual Computing, has announced plans for it to be developed into an app available for the general public.
It means this innovative technology, which works by blending the child's face with that of their parents, could predict the appearance of the next generation decades in advance.
In a world obsessed with selfies and social media, it is likely to become a popular tool as parents try to determine whose features their offspring will inherit - and how well they will fare against the signs of ageing.
Ugail, who claims the software has an 80 per cent success rate, will reveal his future plans at this week's meeting of the British Science Association in Bradford.
As a way of demonstrating the app's capabilities, Ugail has released some examples for several celebrity youngsters as they will look in years to come. Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Harper Beckham and Eric Cowell are all imagined at ages two, seven, 20, 40 and 60.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be glad to see that two-year-old Prince George will still have the same plump cheeks and almond-shaped blue eyes aged seven. He also bears a striking resemblance to his father William - and the software predicts he will maintain his youthful looks well into middle age.
However, the royal is anticipated to begin showing his age with wrinkled skin and greying hair as he reaches the age of 60.
Meanwhile his sister Charlotte, now six months, will look young and fresh-faced well into her sixties - if these images are anything to go by.
Simon Cowell and Lauren Silverman's son Eric is predicted to be a handsome 20-year-old. He shows more gradual signs of aging with his facial features beginning to fill out at age 40. The little boy, who turned one in February, is expected to have a receding hairline as he reaches 60 - despite his father's thick mop of dark hair.
The Beckham's youngest child Harper, who is four, looks set to inherit her mother Victoria's age-defying complexion as she remains wrinkle-free into middle age.
Other celebrity children to be given the high-tech makeover include Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's daughter North West.
'We think we can predict the future appearance of Prince George, Princess Charlotte or any other child with about 80 per cent accuracy,' Ugail told The Sunday Times.
'We used Kate and William [and other celebrities] because images of them and their children are so widely available.'
However with this set of photographs it will be decades, of course, before we can judge the results for ourselves.
To tackle that issue Ugail said he reversed the process, 'de-ageing' celebrities including Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, and comparing them with photographs from their childhood. The results, he claims, were 'striking'.
Eventually the smartphone app will mean that parents can predict how their children will look right into middle age, presumably with just the click of a button.
