What do Google know about your photos?

JonathanRyan

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This is in equal parts fascinating and horrifying.


That website runs Google's ai on your photo and tells you what they know about it. I believe this algorithm is routinely run on any photo uploaded to their cloud. Which more or less means anything about on an Android phone.

I would bet real money that Microsoft and Apple do similar.
 
Well, as so many people put their entire lives into the social media online world, the genie is out of the bottle :headbang: lest anyone complains!
 
I thought to drop a photo of a guy in a dark suit, taken in a studio, into this website you suggested, and see what the AI says about it. It did say that the man "appears to be middle-aged, Caucasian" and also "His attire suggests a professional occupation"

Well, there's the problem, it's not my photo, it's a downloaded photo of guess what? Kevin Bacon.

And the AI fails to realise who he is!

Looks like AI still got a long way to go.

:-)
 
Apart from not recognising him it's not bad lol

persp.jpg
 
I thought to try some more fun with the AI software the OP mentioned in the original post...

A downloaded stills photo of David Tennant in his role as The Doctor. Result according to Google Vision API: It mentions that the man appears to be Caucasian, middle-aged, also suggested based on his clothes, that he have a professional lifestyle. AI could not see that this is The Doctor, from Doctor Who.

Photo of KT Tunstall in an abandoned warehouse. Google says it is a planned photo-shoot, mentions her outfit imply a creative or artistic lifestyle, yet did not recognise her.

Photo of the actress, Hermione Norris, known for Ros in BBC spy series Spooks, as Karen in Cold Feet, and DI Carol Jordan in Wire in the Blood. AI says woman in kitchen, posing, etc., yet fails to say who she is.

Okay, I don't understand it. This AI software can tell you what it sees, like suggesting if they're professional based on their outfit, where the location was, if a DSLR was used, what age range, and so on. Yet the AI couldn't recognise who they are.

Well, for me, I think this AI software is kind of okayish. :)
 
Nobody asked it who was in the picture. That's not what this particular AI is for (or at least not what's allowed on this API).

Meanwhile I showed it a selfie and it told me I clearly understood photography so I think it's amazing :)
 
My Gosh. The things it spots!

Mrs WW is either 10 years old, in her 20's or 30's or middle aged, mostly middle class or class uncertain, east Asian, south east Asian or Chinese and it even spotted the ring on her left ring finger. It even did a good job of identifying a plate of food she was eating :D It kept insisting she had a spot of dirt on her right cheek though, apparently it's been there 7 years so I'll have to tell her to wash her face, dirty dear.

It's interesting that it's obsessed with ethnicity and social class but its guessing of location is hit and miss. It seems to guess the UK pretty well with exceptions but thought that where we live in the north east of England was London, strange as it's not at all like London.

Oh, one strange thing, I forget the wording but it thought that the position of the shadows in one picture indicated digital manipulation. TBH I wouldn't know how to do that and if I did I wouldn't have the patience. I ran the same image again and it didn't mention it. Strange.

I'm now addicted to this :D Thanks for posting! :D
 
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I put a few of my shots in the mix and it told me that they looked like they had come from a professional photoshoot.

Which pleased me :D
 
I don't know about the AI but Google Lens (AI based?) helped me identify an unknown raptor I photographed in Botswana.

I needed to search because unusually Merlin bird ID app did not have it in its database :thinking:
 
I saw a story (about a month ago) about an app that can take an image of anyone and search through all the images available to it and cross reference tags so give the subjects online life story to the user. Creepy IMO!
 
One very odd thing about the API is that it apparently only reads a few of the exif tags.

I uploaded a shot taken on my phone from a rooftop in London. It said the location is probably the correct rooftop from analysing the buildings. Obviously it could have confirmed this by looking at the exif but it didn't.

It then said that I clearly cared about the quality of my photos because I was using a Pixel 6 (! yes, there are adverts in the API - wonder what it says about Samsungs) - I'm pretty sure it can only get that from the exif. So maybe it is deliberately ignoring some bits to train the model.
 
I saw a story (about a month ago) about an app that can take an image of anyone and search through all the images available to it and cross reference tags so give the subjects online life story to the user. Creepy IMO!
That sounds....plausible. The only hard bit is identifying the subject from the photo. Once it can do that, the rest is just searching and crunching with a bit of natural language wrapped round it.
 
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