Google’s Cool Face and Art recognition App

 

Forget trying to get your child or grandkid into good art museums--just get them a mobile device. Today Google released the latest iteration of their Arts & Culture app, which uses image recognition and machine learning to find your portrait in thousands of paintings and sculptures from dozens of classic Western art galleries.

 

The app, which Google says can recognize "over 70 million works of art," has been available in the US for over a year, but the new version adds the ability to search portraits by the person. That means that while you'll still end up with a lot of false positives, it will also guess at more obscure works--and as Google's blog post points out, that might be a fun way to learn about art history. The app will show you similar recognized works of art along with the museum where it found it and a related Wikipedia entry.

 

From there you can look at derivative works of art and related portraits, and also see more about the history and techniques behind what it found. You can also go into an individual artwork's page and manually choose to "get insights" from Wikipedia. But Google is correct in saying that you're probably going to have a lot of fun just seeing what comes up.

 

If you are not in the US, Google says the app will still work with information from museums outside the States.

 

The technology behind it doesn't appear to be too complicated--it's Google's usual machine learning, applied to the easy task of recognizing human faces. But it does fit in with their push for more mobile-friendly products--and let's be honest, who hasn't spent time playing around with face recognition apps? This is just a much more productive version of that. As for whether this will inspire your children--or even you--to pay a visit to your local art museum, that's up to you.

 

Good going Google.

 

The idea of finding your face in paintings is pretty fascinating and fun (and addictive). Looking forward to exploring and seeing what turns up.  This is a cool app.