If more than half of the photos in your smartphone are that of your pet, then you’re probably a certified fur momma or poppa. This new feature from Google Arts & Culture will probably interest you. Pet Portraits allows you to search through the app’s art database and find a doppelgänger or at least a look-alike for your dog, cat, bird, horse, or any pet you may have. The app’s machine algorithm will find paintings, sculptures, and other art pieces that look the closest to your pet.
We keep saying that Arts & Culture is one of Google’s most underrated apps. Aside from giving you virtual and digital access to museums and exhibits, it has a lot of educational tools that can be used for schools and for personal studies. But it also has some features that are just for fun. Previously, it let you upload selfies and then match it with a piece of art that’s the closest to your face or at least your pose and background.
Now it’s your pet’s turn to find an artwork that will match them. You can take a photo of your pet within the Pet Portraits section of Arts & Culture or you can upload a photo from your gallery. Their computer vision algorithm will recognize the background, crop the photo, and basically put them “front and center”. The machine learning algorithm will then match the photo with the “tens of thousands of artworks” from the collections within the app until they find the most similar.
Of course since this is an algorithm, it can be a hit and miss, just like with the selfies’ artworks previously. But it’s a fun exercise that you can screenshot and capture and turn into viral posts. You can also select multiple images from the suggested ones and create a GIF slideshow or a video for your pet. And if you’re curious, you can learn more about the particular artwork as they have information about all of the images in their collection.
Google is encouraging pet owners to post their Pet Portraits on social media and use the hashtags #PetPortraits and tag them @googleartsandculture on Instagram or @googlealerts on Twitter. We also highly recommend you download the Arts & Culture app if you’re interested in anything arts and culture.
