A Look into Google’s Pet Portraits

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By: Nazli Mohideen

Google products like Drive, Messages, Translate, and Maps are just some of the company’s most popular and well-loved features. The Google Arts & Cultures app, however, is one of their hidden gems. 

With this, you can explore museum exhibits around the world with just the tap of a finger. The virtual galleries showcase works from Rio de Janeiro’s Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil to Tokyo’s National Museum of Western Art and beyond. 

There are also different activities available like crosswords, coloring pages, and puzzles. Paintings are displayed and when certain areas of them are hovered over with a computer mouse, details about the art style are revealed as well.  

The feature, initially introduced in 2018, recognized people’s faces and matched their doppelgangers from famous artworks, but has since expanded to include dogs, cats, fish, birds, reptiles, rabbits, and even horses. 

Finding your pet’s look-alike couldn’t be easier! Simply open the Pet Portraits section in the Google Arts & Cultures app and press the rainbow camera button to upload a picture of your pet. After focusing on the main subject of the photo (in this case, being the pet) and running a specialized algorithm, the app will automatically generate a doppelganger. 

While some matches are more realistic than others are, Pet Portraits allows its users to learn more about the artwork from which the match was selected. Some of this information includes the subject, art style, time period, etc. The app will also provide what they call a “compatibility score”-a percentage as to how similar the uploaded photo is to the selected artwork. 

With the hashtag #PetPortraits photos can be shared on social media or multiple photos can be compiled into a GIF. As Google continues to revamp their apps and their coinciding features, they hope to be able to detect doppelgangers in a wider variety of animals in the future. 

https://9to5google.com/web-stories/find-famous-art-with-your-pet-doppelgangers-with-pet-portraits/ 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10181835/Art-Google-launches-Pet-Portraits-feature-shows-famous-painting-pet-resembles.html 
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/google-can-now-match-your-pet-with-their-famous-art-doppelganger-4178181
https://artsandculture.google.com/