Paws meet machine learning with Pet Portraits
According to John Steinbeck, “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” Pet Portraits app
Perhaps Steinbeck’s dogs would have really thought we were nuts back in 2018, when people around the world used Art Selfie to search for their doppelgängers from across art history—with over 120 million selfies taken so far.
But now, pets can get in on the fun too! Google is introducing Pet Portraits, a way for your dog, cat, fish, bird, reptile, horse, or rabbit to discover their very own art among tens of thousands of works from partner institutions around the world. Your animal companion could be matched with ancient Egyptian figurines, vibrant Mexican street art, serene Chinese watercolors, and more.
Just open the rainbow camera tab in the free Google Arts & Culture app for Android and iOS to get started and find out if your pet’s lookalikes are as fun as some of our favorite animal companions and their matches:
When you take a photo in Pet Portraits, a Google-trained computer vision algorithm recognizes where your pet is, crops the image, and puts them where they belong: front and center. Once that is done, a machine learning algorithm matches your pet’s photo with tens of thousands of artworks from our partners’ outstanding collections to find the ones that look most similar. Now it’s time for them to enter the spotlight. Share your pet’s #PetPortraits as a single still image or select multiple images to animate together as a GIF slideshow.
Additionally, Pet Portraits invites you to tap on your results to learn about the stories and artists behind each artwork. Keep on exploring Google Arts & Culture and discover more about our pawed, winged, and hooved friends throughout history. Get to know the 10 coolest cats or dogs of art history, dive into wonders of the natural world, or find out more about fantastic beasts in fiction and nature.
Ready to find your pet in art? Open up the free Google Arts & Culture app for Android or iOS and tap the rainbow camera button at the bottom of the page.
Discover and share your most paw-fact #PetPortraits and don’t forget to tag @googleartsculture on Instagram or @googlearts on Twitter! Pet Portraits app
