It’s always funny the things we see in images that aren’t really there. Like probably most of you who saw this come up as a preview on social media, I thought this was a crowd at a concert on first glance. But no, it’s not, it’s a field of cotton about to be mowed down by machines at night.
Don’t feel too bad, though. It turns out that Google’s Vision AI also thought it was a rock concert, too.
The image was originally posted a week ago to the Instagram feed of photographer Micah Horn. He’s the one who created it, although it hasn’t seen a massive amount of love over on Instagram.
It was spotted and reposted to Twitter, by PhotoSonny, and it’s been messing with peoples heads every since.
Enjoy that brief moment where your brain tells you this is a photo of a crowd at a large concert. pic.twitter.com/SzegeRTAZt
— Sonny Malhotra (@PhotoSonny) November 3, 2017
Even those who are experts at mind manipulation were impressed. Andy Nyman works with the amazing Derren Brown.
Mind blown! https://t.co/nOhdIQCM4V
— Andy Nyman (@andynyman) November 4, 2017
And, yes, even Google Cloud Vision API got confused. So, either the machines are stupid, or the people training them are.
Ran the image through Google Cloud Vision API too and got the following results. I guess we have trained the machines wrongly too ! ;-) pic.twitter.com/eAfhOoHRvA
— Romin Irani (@iRomin) November 5, 2017
Not everybody was fooled, though. This gentleman’s wife certainly wasn’t.
Just showed this to my wife and she says, “Why are you showing me a picture of a field and combine harvesters?” !!!!
— Mike Crook (@mykey987) November 4, 2017
Although plenty were.
i had to zoom in to see why people were cheering for tractors.
— Dave Cochran wants YOU to punch a Nazi (@Dave_Cochran) November 6, 2017
— Skylar (@scratchedcornea) November 6, 2017
NO THOSE PEOPLE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY THAT MACHINE
SOMEONE HELP THEM— b u g (@ErikboundStudio) November 5, 2017
This played out in 5 seconds in my head. 1: It's a concert! 2: Cool! The stage looks like harvesters! 3: Wait, where's the band? 4: Oh.
— Nifflas (@Nifflas) November 5, 2017
Funny thing is, once you know what it really is, you can’t see that crowd again. No matter how hard you try.
Did you spot what it really was straight away? Or was there a moment where you thought it was a crowd at a concert?
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