A new app aims to maximize the chances of meeting a member of the opposite sex by using facial recognition technology to show how many men and women there are in any given bar.

Scene Tap's app also records how crowded a bar is by logging the total number of people inside.

It operates using cameras installed at the doors of participating bars which can distinguish between men and women and give the approximate age of the patrons.

So far some 200 bars in the United States have signed up ahead of the imminent start of the scheme, 50 of them in Scene Tap's home base of Chicago.

CEO Cole Harper told Forbes magazine the facial recognition software is not able to be linked up with Facebook or detect identity, and it certainly can't keep track of how much people are drinking.

Harper, 27, and his co-founder came up with the idea while bar-hopping, spending a lot of money on cabs, getting somewhere and not having it be a good time in Chicago.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Facebook Face id Artificial intelligence App