Eli5 – how does the new google phone know what’s behind the images it removes from pictures?

278 views

I keep seeing these comerciales for this new google(?) phones that will remove background images in photos (like people and animals). How does the phone know what’s behind the images that are being removed? Have they just photographed every inch of the earth already?

In: 3

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s not that they’ve photographed every inch of the Earth. It’s that google has seen enough photographs to make a plausible prediction for what’s behind it.

So lets say you take a photo of yourself in the park and in the background there’s a dog sitting on the grass. It’s fairly easy to guess what should be behind the dog if cut out of the photo: more grass. There might not be grass behind the dog. There might be a second smaller dog standing behind the first. Fill that spot with grass though and no one will be the wiser.

Fun related fact: Everyone has [a blind spot where their optic nerve is](https://lifehacker.com/how-optical-illusions-trick-our-brains-1790829333). You never notice the blind spot because your brain makes reasonable assumptions for what would be there and fills in the hole much like google does.

You are viewing 1 out of 4 answers, click here to view all answers.