ArtLens AI

With ArtLens AI, instead of life imitating art, art imitates your life.

As we continue to do our part to combat the spread of COVID-19, we think we all need a moment of levity and joy—art can bring that. ArtLens AI is the latest in a suite of digital tool sets created by the museum during the pandemic that consider what people need, as we continue to work from home and progress through a new school year. Going beyond traditional museum resources, ArtLens AI: Share Your View is a fun way to bring art into your daily life and an easy way to deep dive into the museum’s collection resources. ArtLens AI follows in the footsteps of the museum’s previous digital endeavors, including the CMA’s Open Access Initiative and the ARTLENS Gallery, and continues the museum’s history of collaboration with creative partners.

Read the blog post

two visually similar photographs of lakes, one a modern, color photograph, the other a black and white image

How does it work?

ArtLensAI: Share Your View is a reverse image search tool that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to match your images to artworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection. ArtLens AI recognizes the shapes, colors, and patterns in the images you upload to find suprising and delighting matches.

Simply upload an image from your device and watch as ArtLens AI pulls the closest matching artworks from the CMA’s Open Access collection. See visual similarities between an artwork from a collection that spans centuries and a photo you snapped from your window. You may be pleasantly surprised!

Are you excited about your results? Share your match on social media or on the CMA’s website gallery. Found an interesting artwork? You can click on the work’s title to learn more about your match in the CMA’s Collection Online.

On Twitter:

On Twitter, attach a photo or image to your tweet and mention @ArtLensAI to share your view. The CMA’s ArtLensAI Twitter bot will automatically reply with a matching artwork from the CMA’s collection!

screenshot of twitter post from @ArtLensAI with image attached. tweet reads: Here's a matching artwork from @clevelandart collection

The Back End

ArtLens AI: Share Your View uses an AI engine, trained on the CMA’s Open Access collection, to recognize the shapes, colors, and patterns in your image and then pull visually similar images from our database. ArtLens AI uses Machine Learning and the open source vector similarity engine Milvus to perform a ‘reverse image search’ of the Open Access collection. Once a photo is uploaded, visual features are extracted then represented as compactly as possible in a series of stacked layers. This approach, combined with the fast similarity search provided by Milvus’s libraries, allows ArtLens AI to match your photo with visually similar artworks within seconds.

Credits

ArtLens AI was created by the Cleveland Museum of Art in collaboration with Design I/O. The website gallery was created in collaboration with Substrate Websoft.

The Fine Print

The Cleveland Musuem of Art (“CMA”) respects the privacy of every individual and is committed to protecting your privacy. It is important to us that when you use ArtLensAI, you are fully aware of our respective rights and obligations. The CMA never saves your uploaded image unless you explicitly choose to share your result to the CMA’s website gallery.

By choosing to upload to the CMA’s visitor gallery, your photograph will be added to the ArtLens AI website database. The CMA reserves the right to use this image for any and all purposes. The CMA reserves the right to remove any image at any time.

The CMA does not knowingly permit registration by and will not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under 13. Minors between the ages of 13 and 17 must obtain the permission of a parent or legal guardian before using ArtLens AI.

Read the CMA’s full terms and conditions and privacy policy.

Questions or comments? Reach out to us at ArtLensAI [at] clevelandart.org.

Looking for an artwork in the collection?

ArtLens AI