Key Takeaways
- Google Arts & Culture app offers new features like Art Transfer 2 and Culture Weekly for engaging art experiences.
- Art Transfer 2 allows users to stylize personal photos with iconic art styles, providing insights into art history.
- Culture Weekly provides curated fun facts on selected cultural topics, while Art Zoom Out envisions enlarged AI-generated art pieces.
Google’s Art & Culture app is a weird blend of controversial AI art as well as a celebration of some of the biggest names and cultural phenomena in the art world. Regardless of how you feel about artificial art, there’s no doubt in our minds that the Arts & Culture app is fascinating and a good way to spend some of your time. It’s also quite appealing to look at, as it finally got a dark theme in April. Today, Google announced three new features that will keep users coming back to the app for more.
On Google’s blog, it was announced that the Google Arts & Culture app will be getting new tools to help increase your connection with art history and have fun with famous paintings and art styles. Perhaps the biggest update is the addition of Art Transfer 2, which Google says will invite you to “explore your artistic side while gaining a deeper understanding of art history — all through your own photos.” Basically, you’ll be able to upload your own photos from your camera roll to the app, and then Art & Culture will use Gemini to stylize them in “iconic art-inspired” ways. Afterward, Gemini will analyze the art you just created, and it will provide insights into the nuances of that specific art style. This is an expansion upon the 2020-born Art Transfer mode.
Weekly dose of Culture
(Source: Google)
Art Transfer 2 isn’t the only new addition to the app. Culture Weekly has been added, and it’s a once-per-week swath of content about your selected “cultural topic.” Google says that it will be a go-to source for “curated fun facts about topics that interest you,” and users can select from things such as visual arts, fashion, history, and more. Lastly, Art Zoom Out has been added, and it will use generative AI to “envision what might lie beyond the frame of iconic paintings.” It’s a pretty cool take at what more expansive artwork would look like using notes from the same style, but it’s still AI-generated art.
Honestly, that’s the part that continues to stick out at us. We love how the app has done things like diving into the mind of Leonardo da Vinci, but we can’t help but feel a bit icky about AI-developed casual art games. Google Gemini is insanely cool, but it comes at the cost of people’s imagination and abilities.