Quick, Draw! is an online game from the Google Creative Lab, which they characterize as an AI experiment. The game challenges you to draw a picture of an object or concept, which their AI engine tries to guess as you are drawing. No artistic skill is required. You have 20 seconds to draw the word they give you in black and white, and the AI has to guess what it is before the time is up. Some of what I thought were my better drawings were not guessed by the AI, but some drawings where I had only completed the most basic starting shape (the rectangle that I started my ambulance with, for example) were guessed before I even got the wheels on, which seems fishy. There is some repetition if you play multiple rounds, and it gets a little smarter each time. And unlike playing Pictionary with humans, putting the object in context seemed to confuse the AI rather than helping it.

I kind of hate helping AI learn, and I didn’t expect it to be much fun, but for the purpose of this post, I stuck with it for a bit. It wasn’t boring, but I was most entertained by the odd drawings my brain and hand delivered. 20 seconds isn’t a lot of time, and some of my results were, well, you’ll see. (my lion, for example, strongly resembles a spider, but the AI guessed it…). The most interesting feature (to me) is that after a round of 6 drawings, it shows you the screen above. You can click on your individual drawings to see how the AI arrived at its answer. This feature shows you the top three likely guesses for your drawing, then shows you what other people have drawn for the same thing.

If you find yourself with nothing to do and want to play a bit, Quick, Draw! isn’t a bad diversion. You can find it on their website.