Sarah Maybruck ’18

The newest feature that has drawn people to download the Google Arts & Culture app is the facial scanner that matches a user’s face to a famous painting.

Originally created as a way to teach people about art, the app has thousands of paintings organized into collections for users to view and learn about.

“I thought it was really cool,” Maddie Baildon ’19 said. “Not just to see who your painting doppelgänger is but also because it gives great insight to [the] arts.”

According to the App Store, “Google Arts & Culture has collaborated with over 1,200 international museums, galleries and institutions from 70 countries to make their exhibits available for everyone.”

For the art doppelgänger feature of the app, a user must first take a selfie.  Then the program searches through its databases and presents users with a match. Each portrait includes a percentage of how much you resemble it.

Though the technology in the app is meant to create the closest matches, some feel that the app may not work as well as advertised.

“Some of them, yeah; others no,” Monique Østbye ’18 said. “It depends what angle you get the picture at.”

Despite the apps’ recent popularity, receiving 112.3 thousand ratings and four and a half stars in the App Store, many users have deleted it after being matched with their matching art masterpiece.

“You take one photo and get that surprise,” Samantha Taylor ’21 said, “and then it’s kind of the same paintings every other time, so it isn’t as fun.”