AI and Detecting Dogs

Photography

Everybody talks about artificial intelligence and how it will revolutionize … (insert whatever topic you want). Currently, it’s mostly used for pattern matching and subject identification. Google has made available its “Google Vision API” to analyze photos.

I used this photo of my dog, with his dumb/happy corgi look, from a previous posting: https://www.sritch.com/dogs/dumb-corgi-look/

dog
dog

The image cannot be any simpler:

  • It’s one dog that takes about ½ of the whole image.
  • It’s a black and white photo with some slight sepia toning.
  • Single subject: my dog
  • Background: out of focus grass
  • Foreground: out of focus grass

Here’s exactly what Google analyzed the image as:

The image shows a plain blue surface as the main focus. There is nothing else in the foreground or background, creating a minimalist and somewhat monotonous visual experience. The texture appears to be uniform, suggesting a smooth or possibly subtly textured material.

The lack of any discernible people or objects within the image makes it impossible to comment on their characteristics, emotions, or activities. The image itself appears to be a simple close-up shot, likely taken with a device capable of high-resolution capture, judging by the detail in the texture. The time of creation cannot be determined from the image alone.

The image’s overall simplicity may mask some subtle details that would be hard to spot at first glance. The exact shade of blue is hard to define without color calibration tools. Additionally, the subtle textural changes across the image might be due to the material’s weave or printing process, hinting at an underlying structure or pattern not immediately obvious.

Google Vision API – December 2024

  1. This is Google’s analysis, word for word.
  2. Even the bolding is provided by Google.

Conclusions

  1. Google hasn’t figured out that this photo is the photo of a dog! Any human being above the age of 1 year old would immediately identify that it’s a photo of a dog.
  2. This is black and white image has a slight sepia toning to warm it up. There’s almost no blue in the sepia toning. I don’t understand why is Google “stuck” on the “plain blue surface.” Here’s the exact formula for tinting, that I used, is:
  • 16% red
  • 14% green
  • 11% blue