Vision AI is just as stupid as real people. This isn’t a crowd of people at a concert
Nov 6, 2017
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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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.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba2k-HclBz4/
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.
https://twitter.com/Dave_Cochran/status/927376752074219521
https://twitter.com/scratchedcornea/status/927397572783742977
NO THOSE PEOPLE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY THAT MACHINE
SOMEONE HELP THEM— Iron Erik (@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@mastodon.gamedev.place) (@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?
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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10 responses to “Vision AI is just as stupid as real people. This isn’t a crowd of people at a concert”
A field of plants at night.
no, my brain did not tell me it is a concert.. some brains may have told that because of the title. sorry.
AI as stupid as people
Sounds like a praise to AI developers, or? ^^
Absolutely
Harvesters harvesting cotton, right ?
It tricked me for a second because someone wrote concert in picture title on another post so yes it can trick someone if he don’t pay attention and just scroll quickly. But as soon as i looked over second on picture i realized what it is.
I blame social media and all friends and relatives going to awesome concerts I can’t afford to go.
In a sense though, there’s a catchy description for an upcoming rock concert… we’re gonna mow you down like huge harversters down a cotton field at night!
Cotton pickers – we live next to quite a few cotton fields being picked now.
All those concert goers seem to have more hair than I do!!!
Deere. John Deere.