Google App Uses Machine Learning to Discover Your Pet’s Look Alike in 10,000 Classic Works of Art

Does your cat fan­cy her­self a 21st-cen­tu­ry incar­na­tion of Bastet, the Egypt­ian God­dess of the Ris­ing Sun, pro­tec­tor of the house­hold, aka The Lady of Slaugh­ter?

If so, you should def­i­nite­ly per­mit her to down­load the Google Arts & Cul­ture app on your phone to take a self­ie using the Pet Por­traits fea­ture.

Remem­ber all the fun you had back in 2018 when the Art Self­ie fea­ture mis­took you for William II, Prince of Orange or the woman in “Jacob Cor­nelisz. van Oost­sa­nen Paint­ing a Por­trait of His Wife”?

Sure­ly your pet will be just as excit­ed to let a machine-learn­ing algo­rithm trawl tens of thou­sands of art­works from Google Arts & Culture’s part­ner­ing muse­ums’ col­lec­tions, look­ing for dop­pel­gängers.

Or maybe it’ll just view it as one more exam­ple of human fol­ly, if a far less­er evil than our predilec­tion for pet cos­tumes.

Should your pet wish to know more about the art­works it resem­bles, you can tap the results to explore them in depth.

Dogs, fish, birds, rep­tiles, hors­es, and rab­bits can play along too, though any­one hail­ing from the rodent fam­i­ly will find them­selves shut out.

Mash­able reports that “upload­ing a stock image of a mouse returned draw­ings of wolves.”

We can’t blame your pet snake for fum­ing.

Dit­to your Viet­namese Pot-bel­lied pig.

Though your pet fer­ret prob­a­bly doesn’t need an app (or a crys­tal ball) to know what its result would be. Bet­ter than an ermine col­lar, any­way…

If your pet is game and falls with­in Pet Por­traits approved species para­me­ters, here are the steps to fol­low:

1. Launch the Google Arts & Cul­ture app and select the Cam­era but­ton. Scroll to the Pet Por­traits option.
2. Have your pet take a self­ie. (Or alter­na­tive­ly, upload a saved image.)
3. Give the app a few sec­onds (or min­utes) to return mul­ti­ple results with sim­i­lar­i­ty per­cent­ages.

Down­load the Google Arts & Cul­ture app here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google’s Free App Ana­lyzes Your Self­ie and Then Finds Your Dop­pel­ganger in Muse­um Por­traits

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail