Computers With Opinions On Visual Aesthetics

photoenthusiast writes "Penn State researchers launched a new online photo-rating system, code named Acquine (Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine), for automatically determining the aesthetic value of a photo. Users can upload their own photographs for an instant Acquine rating, a score from zero to 100. The system learns to associate extracted visual characteristics with the way humans rate photos based on a lot of previously-rated photographs. It is designed for color natural photographic pictures. Technical publications reveal how Acquine works."

Comments

Computers with opinions?!

[Seriousity]

Oh great, now we'll turn our computer on in the morning, and it will say "I think this is far too early!" and switch itself back off.

Re:Computers with opinions?!

[RogueyWon]

Oh, this takes me back to something that happened when I was still at school, around about 1996 or so.

At the time, despite being pretty much clueless by slashdot standards, I functioned (and still do function, when I can't avoid it) as the all purpose IT helpdesk for my family.

Now, I have an aunt who was working as a manager in a medium sized UK based IT firm (I can't remember the name and I don't even think they're still around). However, do not take this as any indication that she knew anything at all about computers. She didn't. Nor did she have any inclination to learn. She could just about manage to use Microsoft Office and the web/e-mail clients that were around at the time (I think this was around the time of Netscape 2). Literally anything beyond that would baffle her. She'd call her monitor "the computer" and so on. She was employed, I gather, for her "management skills".

Now, even at the time, I had a feeling that this was a crock. My aunt is a rather forceful personality. A less diplomatic person might use more bovine terminology and I always got the impression that she wouldn't be much fun to work for.

She's also very, very, very large (over 25 stone) and ugly as sin to boot. That's not me being deliberately rude. There's just no nicer way to put it without doing a genuine dis-service to the truth.

Anyway, one Saturday afternoon, I get a call from her. Her voice implies that she's perched in that dangerous territory between bursting into tears and throwing a screaming, PC-destroying fit. Apparently, her computer is "insulting" her. I need to go over there instantly. I got a lot of this kind of stuff until, a couple of years later, I finally told her where she could stick it after I moved off to university and got a call asking me to travel 200 miles to fix something. Anyway, I'm not best pleased about losing a Saturday afternoon, especially with exams coming up, but for the sake of a quiet life, I head over.

Oh boy was it ever worth it.

Sure enough, every two minutes on the dot, her PC is insulting her. Whatever she's doing in Windows, a little dialogue box will pop up with a splendidly vicious insult. I mean, some these were absolute gems and were clearly aimed right at her personally. A few of the more repeatable examples (and I still remember these more than a decade later) were:

"Careful! Better fetch an extra chair. I think those two are about to give way."
"Wow you must be constipated. Or does your face just look like that normally?"
"Did you just fart, or do you always smell like that?"
"Wipe your face. Half your lunch is stuck between your fifth and sixth chins."
"Is that your face or your arse I can see? Your face? Hmm... the arse might be better."
"I can access over 64,000,000 images via the Internet and none of them are as ugly as you."
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No? How about a half-digested turnip?"

There was plenty of other stuff as well, including the old classics about ID10T and PEBCAK errors, but enough of it was specific enough to my aunt (making mention of particularly distinctive unflattering features) that this was clearly something bespoke.

Anyway, my aunt's in an absolute state at this point. She's convinced that the computer is insulting her. She tells me she tried covering up the monitor for half an hour (so it couldn't see her), but when she came back, it had been queuing up the insults.

Anyway, having confirmed that a virus scanner doesn't pick anything up, I ask to see any disks she's put in the PC lately, or any files she's downloaded. The downloaded files all look pretty safe, and it doesn't seem like anything dodgy's come in via e-mail either. However, she then shows me a couple of disks (3.5" floppies) she'd brought home with work on. These are a numbered series of progress reports. Most of the disks look absolutely fine - a few Word and Excel files. Nothing too scary (I don't think MS Office files were being used extensively for exploits at the time).

However, on the fi

Re:Computers with opinions?!

[c0p0n]

Dude, the algorithm is simple. B&W pictures automatically get 85 points.

Computer, play something by Billy Joel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'am afraid I cannot do that Dave.

Rubbish.

[onion2k]

It's terrible. Awful. A hopeless system. I wouldn't use ever it.

And I'm not just saying that because it rated a couple of my photos as poor. :)

Re:Matter of opinion?

[TapeCutter]

"Generic, boring and frankly badly composed"

My computer says you have no taste.

Re:Matter of opinion?

[Guano_Jim]

Tubgirl, on the other hand, rates a 58.8/100.

Someone please stop me.

terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

It prefers a nazi germany flag over some beautiful landscapes and portraits

my name is godwin and I approve this message

Re:Matter of opinion?

[Guano_Jim]

Acquine's rating of the first Google Image result for "Natalie Portman Hot Grits:"

76.1/100

Judging from my quick research, it's clear that Acquine is going to turn into Skynet someday.

Pulitzer versus Goatse....

[VinylRecords]

Just google image search for any Pulitzer Prize winning photo and upload it to the Penn State ACQUINE system and see how some of them fare to the Goatse image...

The Iwo Jima flag raising photo at this URL gets a 26.1 in the system.
http://surreality.info/up/WW2_Iwo_Jima_flag_raising.jpg

The fucking Goatse image with a construction crane photoshopped into it (don't ask) just got an 84.1 on the same ACQUINE system....and no I'm not going to provide a URL just test it yourself.

So Goate is a better image than the Iwo Jima flag raising photo?

Am I missing something?

Re:Matter of opinion?

[Guano_Jim]

By the way, I uploaded a screenshot of the Google results for "Slashdot Karma Whore" (all text) and got a 42.4/100.

In other, unrelated news...

[jamesh]

In other, unrelated news, Penn State researchers have released an online image voting system called 'Aesthetic or not' where users are presented with a random image and have to give it a score of between 0 and 100.

Initial user participation was good until for some completely unknown reason, 90% of images presented to users for rating were goatse, tubgirl, or other shock images.

Great...

[stms]

Now I don't Have to look at so much porn to find the pics I want to look at.

Re:Our redundant brains

[noidentity]

This is great news, a system to tell us whether a photograph is beautiful or not. We are approaching the point where we can outsource all our thinking to computers. Soon we won't have to use our brains at all!

Wow, what an uhh... <looks at what mods rated your post>... insightful posting! I'll have to wait to find out what kind of posting mine is.

Re:Acquine may assign funny scores...

[onedotzero]

I uploaded a 1x1 pixel black image. It scored 24.6. I then uploaded a 1x1 pixel white image, which scored 41.7.

Looks your rating is accurate :)

Re:My lone opinion

[inode_buddha]

I wonder how this AI will react to goatse? Will it have a human response?

Re:Acquine may assign funny scores...

[Twinbee]

It looks like one would get more consistent results out of the checksum for a picture ;)

Thanks for testing that - not many would have.