Google’s art app is now top of iOS and Android download charts thanks to its viral selfies
No thanks to art,or culture
No thanks to art,or culture
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission.See our ethics statement.
It’s amazing what a powerful driver human curiosity can be. Just look at Google’s noble-minded but pretty unexciting Google Arts & Culture app — overlooked by most until it launched a feature last week that let usersmatch their selfies to faces in famous artworks.
Now, since at least this weekend onwards, it’s been riding high as the most-downloaded free app on bothiOS andAndroid. Heavy-hitters like Messenger and YouTube have been left in the dust. Even, uh, Sweatcoin (which apparently lets you mine cryptocurrency by walking somehow?) has fallen behind.
The app itself has been available since 2016, and offers an impressive mix of articles and features on artists and art history. It’s also a fantastic catalogue of artworks, letting you explore by different styles, time periods — even colors.
But really, congratulations must got to whoever at Google thought of using some fairly straightforward facial recognition tech to match selfies to paintings. I hope they got a raise. Even celebrities have been trying it out:
The only problem is that Google Arts & Culture has been a victim of its own success. It’s not clear how widely available the selfie-matching feature is outside of the US (it might be restricted in Europe because of the EU’s regulations on facial recognition tech). This has led to more than a few disgruntled reviews from users overseas. They love Arts & Culture,but only if they can get their selfies matched first.
- James Vincent
More inTech
