‘Quick Draw’ Teaches an AI to Recognize Your Drawings

Doodle away in Quick Draw and see if a neural network AI can figure out what you’re trying to draw.

Here at Indie Games Plus we’re all about discovering new experiences. Many times, that means that we will gladly spend our words telling you about things which fall outside of traditional game structures, or even cover serious matters which cannot be classified as entertainment. This time, however, we’re talking about Quick Draw With Google, an A.I experiment which is built to teach a neural network to recognize doodles and to test whether it can do so. It’s both weird and wonderful at the same time.

In many ways Quick Draw with Google is a silly game which challenges you to essentially play Pictionary/Draw Something with a neural network. As it calls out its guesses at your drawings, it is both something which can be related with, but also something uncanny — something not quite right about a machine essentially playing a CAPTCHA test with you.

It is both fascinating and eerie that we know the identifying features of these objects, and through repetitive exposure, the network can learn those same traits. That it can go from the saying about infinite monkeys and typewriters managing the works of Shakespeare, to a human player questioning whether they should have drawn the whole animal or just the face.

That said, there’s a surprising fun in having a machine guess at your drawing. The second you see your word, you mentally know the rough shape you’re going to draw. You know this before you start, and the AI also knows those same points and features. It’s perhaps most fascinating when you don’t manage to draw the whole image as the AI guessed so quickly — especially when you check out the data gallery which shows off some fantastic drawings which have already educated the A.I on shape and form. The page of 231k penguins is great.

If enough people drew a cruise ship when it asked for drawings of bananas, then it would never know the truth.

Quick, Draw is available to play for free on the game’s site.

About The Author

Dann Sullivan

After almost a decade of selling games, Dann decided to try his hand at writing about them instead. A few years in and he is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Big Boss Battle, where he and his team cover games of all shapes and sizes. When not in the role, he can often be found seeking out small, memorable game experiences.

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