Quickdraw with Google

Strictly speaking this is not a game, but rather an experiment of machine learning. But well, it's fun. Try it out here.

It's basically playing Pictionary with the computer. After starting the game with the "Let's Draw" button, you'll be prompted to draw an object. While you are drawing, the computer will guess what the object is. It will continue guessing until either it gets the right answer, or the 20 second time limit is up. Then it will proceed to the next drawing. After finishing all six pictures, the game ends and the results will be shown like in figure 1. You may click on each picture to see what the computer thinks the three closest matches are (figure 2) and scroll down to see how the object was drawn by other people. (figure 3)

Figure 1: 5 out of 6 correct guesses, not bad.

Figure 2: How this resembles a penguin is beyond me.

Figure 3: Pliers, lots of pliers.

See this video for an explanation of how this experiment works. Apparently the computer has become so familiar with some objects (for example: sail boat) that it can recognize them after a few strokes. Because the way it recognizes objects is different from how humans do, it leads to some strange and amusing results like thinking the pair of pliers is a penguin as shown above. Also, as it depends solely on the large number of examples it is shown, a sufficient number of determined trolls can convince it to think this is what an elephant looks like.

Another interesting observation is that the more detailed your drawing, the less recognizable it becomes. A simple silhouette of a fish can be recognized easily, but if the computer can’t get it right the first time and you start adding fins, scales, gill etc. It actually makes increasingly ridiculous guesses. Those details might as well be called noises in this case.

Have fun doodling.