Image recognition is a vital component that's mostly missing from our box of Internet tools. How it all works speaks to the nature of the way we build our digital devices and the way those machines digest the unimaginable amount of data that exists in our tech-obsessed world. Somehow, the company is guiding those servers to analyze images and then regurgitate them as new representations of our world. They're eerily evocative and often more than a little terrifying.Ĭlearly, Google isn't throwing nightly raves and feeding its computers hallucinatory chemicals.
Only these aren't normal-looking animals - they're fantastical recreations that seem crossed with an LSD-tinged kaleidoscope. Upload a portrait of Tom Cruise, and Google's program will rework creases and spaces as dog heads, fish and other familiar creatures. Where before there was an empty landscape, Deep Dream creates pagodas, cars, bridges and human body parts. Leaves, rocks and mountains morph into colorful swirls, repetitive rectangles and graceful highlighted lines. The results are typically a bizarre hybrid digital image that looks like Salvador Dali had a wild all-night painting party with Hieronymus Bosch and Vincent van Gogh.
You can upload any image you like to Google's program, and seconds later you'll see a fantastical rendering based on your photograph. Google made its dreaming computers public to get a better understanding of how Deep Dream manages to classify and index certain types of pictures. One of the best ways to understand what Deep Dream is all about is to try it yourself.