Google’s AutoDraw uses machine learning to turn your doodles into art

Google’s latest tool can turn your doodles into works of art.

It’s launched AutoDraw, a web-based app powered by machine learning. With that technology, AutoDraw can recognise your crude drawings, whether it’s a flower or a cake or a smiley face, and it can smartly serve up pre-drawn alternatives created by “talented artists” to replace it. Google is pitching this app as a free, easier alternative to paid, complex programs from the likes of Adobe.

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Not only is the app free to use, but it also available on mobile devices. It works like this: draw a cat, or try to anyway, and the auto suggestion tool will attempt to decipher your doodle. At that point, you can choose from a variety of actual cat drawings. You can also turn off the auto suggestions so that you can just draw whatever you want and use the app as a digital sketchpad.

AutoDraw uses the same technology as Google’s QuickDraw experiment. While that tells you which objects to draw, AutoDraw is a tool you can open up to make birthday cards or posters. But they both teach a neural network to recognise doodles. Google said AutoDraw can guess hundreds of drawings, and it plans to update it with more suggestions in the future.

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Interested artists can contribute to the project from here.