Google Arts & Culture app can now find your pet’s twin in paintings

Back in 2018, Google applied its knowledge in machine learning—specifically in facial recognition—and combined it with its Arts & Culture app. The result was a feature called Art Selfie, which let users match their faces to the app’s vast library of digitized paintings. It blew up the app's popularity and even caused it to reach the No. 1 free app spot on Google Play.

Three years later, Google has now come out with an extension of the Art Selfie feature dubbed “Pet Portraits.” A logical step for the Arts & Culture app to take. After all, what’s better than looking at your pet’s doppelgänger from some famous painting out there—proper internet material.

The app can match your pet to almost anything you can think of, from ancient Egyptian figurines to modern and vibrant Mexican street art. The sea of choices the AI can pick from is as vast as you would expect from Google. The search giant says that the app can work with much more than dogs and cats, including animals like horses, rabbits, birds, reptiles, and even fish!

If you want to take the Pet Portraits feature for a spin, it is very easy to do so. All you need is to open the app and tap on the camera button in the middle, highlighted with Google colors. Then you just have to find it among the options presented to you. The feature is available on both the iOS and Android versions of the Arts & Culture app.

As one might expect, Pet Portraits is not quite as accurate as Art Selfie itself. Often, you won’t get that precise of a match, but the app is nonetheless an entertaining way to learn more about the history of the artwork and the artist behind it. The app also allows you to share your pet’s portraits as a single still image or a GIF slideshow.