When selfies go artsy

Technology has constantly helped redefine how people interact with art. Museum Snapchats and Prisma filters have done their fair share. The latest one on the list has people not only obsessing over it, but has introduced them to artists and art they would not have known otherwise. The Google Arts and Culture has taken over the world by storm. Surprisingly, the app is over two years old. It was launched as a way to offer virtual tours of over 1,000 museums, and also has a website that offers museum tours.

Thanks to its updated ‘selfie feature’, where it pairs the user’s selfie with an art doppleganger, the app has become the new craze.

That feature went live in mid-December, but was discovered only after a few selfies began popping up on Twitter and Facebook. The app is currently no.1 on  iOS App Store and Google Play Store. The app is easy to use. Once downloaded, the user has to snap a selfie. After which the photo is matched with several paintings, that has an essence of the user’s looks. Some of the pics are extremely flattering while some are not, and this is what makes the app fun to use.

The app also displays a percentage that indicates how alike the selfie and painting are.

The app uses automated image analysis to compare the similarities on the user’s face to thousands of works of art that are shared with Google by museums and institutions around the world.