Google's Museum App Finds Your Fine Art Doppelganger (engadget.com)

The latest update to the Google Arts & Culture app now lets you take a selfie, and using image recognition, finds someone in its vast art collection that most resembles you. It will then present you and your fine art twin side-by-side, along with a percentage match, and let you share the results on social media. Engadget reports: The app, which appears to be unfortunately geo-restricted to the United States, is like an automated version of an article that circulated recently showing folks standing in front of portraits at museums. In many cases, the old-timey people in the paintings resemble them uncannily, but, other than in rare cases, that's not the case at all with Google's app. Google matched me with someone who doesn't look like me in the slightest, a certain Sir Peter Francois Bourgeois, based on a painting hanging in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Taking a buzz around the internet, other folks were satisfied with their matches, some took them as a personal insult, and many were just plain baffled, in that order.

Comments

Thanks, Google - but I call shenanigans

[93 Escort Wagon]

There's no way I most resemble Edvard Munch's The Scream .

Re:Thanks, Google - but I call shenanigans

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just another way for Google to harvest data on people. Anyone who actually sends their picture to Google (or Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) is an idiot.

Re: Thanks, Google - but I call shenanigans

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone else miss the golden girls posts, or the moo posts. ore eve (shudders) goatse?

Re:Thanks, Google - but I call shenanigans

[PPH]

You think that's bad? Google sent me back a picture of Muhammad.

Bit by bit

[BlacKSacrificE]

The cynic in me see's this as just another ploy by Google to give up biometric data. And people will happily feed the machine without so much as a second thought because they want to see which artwork they look like? Is that really worth the cost?

Re:Bit by bit

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Good point. I who am lately customarily suspicious of Google was ready to upload my photo, had I found a link. Won't look any further. Feels like Google has burned a lot of its good karma over the last few years.

Re:Bit by bit

[AHuxley]

Biometric data to connect to encrypted OS, browsers that only let in approved brand ads.
Value added as the correct user is exposed to the correct ads at the OS, browser level. New OS and browser lock to stop third party ad blockers :)

Re:Bit by bit

[gl4ss]

..it's a ployt for the team scanning the fine arts to justify their funding.

I mean come on, the whole concept is as simple as it gets - run facial recognition on the database and return the best match.

it might serve some purpose for working as a warning for why maybe you shouldn't rely on facial recognition... because, come on, people aren't as unique as they seem once you scale things up.

Re: Bit by bit

[pslytely psycho]

"Why do people reject Islam and Allah? "

Easy.
BACON!!!!

Re:Bit by bit

[Baron_Yam]

>people aren't as unique as they seem once you scale things up

There are a LOT of combinations of colour, size, relative feature positions, and shapes. Even with 7.5 billion of us, other than identical twins who make an effort to look the same there are no real duplicates if you look closely.

On the other hand, if you relax a bit there are tons and tons of fairly similar people... and to today's facial recognition systems they may as well be the same person.

Re:Bit by bit

[swillden]

The cynic in me see's this as just another ploy by Google to give up biometric data.

The app tells you "Google won't use data from your photo for any other purpose and will only store your photo for the time it takes to search for matches".

Re:Bit by bit

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

And Google told you its corporate motto was "Don't be evil." I bet you believed it'd stand by that too.

Re: Bit by bit

[amicusNYCL]

Why do people reject Islam and Allah?

In part, because of people like you.

Re:Bit by bit

[ndykman]

Nope, you got it exactly right. A large database of faces tied to identifiable information has real value, This is a way to help Google catch up with LinkedIn and Facebook (who, with Instagram is way in the lead) in terms of data.

Orwell got it wrong, we didn't need the government to oppressively remove our privacy, we gave it up in return for Pavlovian instant gratification. The like button was ingenious, it truly was.

Re:Homosexuality is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooo gay. Coping much?

Me, I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is who Google thinks I most resemble. Personally when I look in the mirror, I don't see the likeness.

Re:Me, I guess.

[PPH]

I've given up looking in mirrors.

Prism now wants your pic

[AHuxley]

Strange how much US social media and web 2.0 now wants your pic?
Who wants to give their pic to the companies that helped the security services?
PRISM (surveillance program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Facebook's New Captcha Test: 'Upload A Clear Photo of Your Face'
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Facebook Will Use Facial Recognition To Tell You When People Upload Your Picture
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Now its all about "art".... to get your selfie.

Re:Prism now wants your pic

[CODiNE]

Facebook emails me a reminder to do this about once a month. They really, REALLY want to know.

Re:Prism now wants your pic

[swillden]

Strange how much US social media and web 2.0 now wants your pic?

The app says "Google won't use data from your photo for any other purpose and will only store your photo for the time it takes to search for matches".

Of course, if you then share the result on Facebook, Facebook will have (yet another) photo of you.

Who wants to give their pic to the companies that helped the security services? PRISM (surveillance program)

It appears that the only data the NSA was getting from Google was from tapping fiber optic lines between Google data centers. There's no evidence that Google ever cooperated -- beyond complying with legal orders -- and Google has explicitly denied cooperating. Oh, and after the Snowden stuff came out, Google accelerated a project to encrypt all internal communications.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be vigilant and careful with what information you give to whom, or that you should just blindly trust anyone -- including Google -- but a lot of the paranoia that floats around is unjustified and serves mostly to distract from the things you really do need to be careful about.

Re:Prism now wants your pic

[AHuxley]

Re ' but a lot of the paranoia that floats around is"
PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... has what "floats" around....
Thats US telco and US big brand access to the security services for some time.
That the US big brands allowed, helped with, did not have the skills to detect and did not mention, did not try better encryption...
While their big brand data just flowed out.

Building a face database

[QuietLagoon]

A nice way to get people to submit a good image of their face so that google can build a database of faces and try to catch up to facebook in this area.

Re:Building a face database

[QuietLagoon]

... Perhaps it just might be time to loosen the tin foil hat a little bit....

Given google's history, being prudent does not mean one is wearing a tin foil hat.

... Google won't use data from your photo for any other purpose and will only store your photo for the time it takes to search for matches...

Once google has processed the photo, the photo is no longer needed, so why store it? Google may not use this data, but who else, besides google will have access to this data? What third parties? Googles overall privacy policy is wide open to google sharing data with third parties.

...They have all the selfies from Google+ users (go ahead and make a joke...

No joking, just the reality that google (and, by reference, google+) has a long, long way to go in order to catch up to facebook's facial database.

... I'm not sure what more this app would give them....

Exactly. Google is getting something out of this app. I wonder what it is?

Re:Building a face database

[swillden]

A nice way to get people to submit a good image of their face so that google can build a database of faces and try to catch up to facebook in this area.

The app says "Google won't use data from your photo for any other purpose and will only store your photo for the time it takes to search for matches".

Yes worth it

[SuperKendall]

In my own case, closest was a 50% match that did not look that much like me. But it was a cool idea so I was happy to give up my image in perpetuity for the effort.

Although that's meant as a kind of funny response, I actually don't mind my image being used to train facial recognition AI engines. It's just a tool, that can be used for good or ill - but tools are useful.

I laughed so hard that I couldn't breathe.

[jmhysong]

I just saw this tweet about that app tonight. Hilarious! (NSFW) https://twitter.com/RoryAlbane...

Additional functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

Will tell you whether your face is a hot dog or not.

Origin of the world

[DrYak]

Wait until somebody gets matched to L'Origine du Monde (by Gustave Courbet)