Sensual Machines

Adult Computer Vision Experiment

“First, we teach them to see.”

“Then, they help us to see better.”

“Little by little, we’re giving sight to the machines. First, we teach them to see. Then, they help us to see better. For the first time, human eyes won’t be the only ones pondering & exploring our world.” — Fei Fei Li

Sensual Machines is a series of experiments, exploring Computer Vision Systems. These experiments seek to highlight explicitly the importance of not only the Inputs, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, the Outputs and Outcomes of such machine activity. How would we see our world better through the machines’ eyes?

The experiment started innocently with a web-crawler collecting 10gb of images from the Web. The data was then analysed. Disconcertingly, a large proportion of these images turned out to be pornographic or militaristic in nature. Let’s explore this adult statistical anomaly through the eyes of machines - so we can see better.

Recognition

Recognising Images with Neural Networks

Object recognition deals with the problem of finding and identifying objects in an image or video. Humans recognise a multitude of objects in images with little effort. We recognise objects even when they are partially obstructed from view or skewed. This task is still a challenge for computer vision.

The experiment began with an exploration of RCNN. RCNN is a state-of-the-art object detection system based on convolutional neural networks. RCNN makes high quality object & face detection relatively easy. Project Oxford was used additionally, as it offers built-in gender & age classification.

NSFW Warning: What follows is potentially shocking and of questionable moral composition.

A redacted selection from 1,000 images analysed with image recognition: