AutoDraw is a new program created by Google that can detect what a person is drawing, even if it’s a bad drawing, and then provide them with a better, more completed drawing automatically.
As you draw, the program makes suggestions as to what the drawing may be. When you see a suggestion that is correct, you simply click on it, and the program provides you with free art.
The program works thanks to Google’s AI program called ‘Quick Draw‘. QuickDraw asks users to draw a specific item as fast as they can. It then uses the drawings it’s gathered to better learn how people tend to draw those objects based on previous users depictions of that object. That information is then compiled and used as the basis for the drawing detection algorithm in AutoDraw.
Both programs are still very rudimentary and have limited application, but the implications of them are really intriguing. It is incredible that we can begin to teach computers to understand what we mean, even if our descriptions are imperfect, by teaching them to take context and iconography into account. How long will it be before computers can create legitimate works of art, or immersive 3D environments just by us describing them?
You can try ‘AutoDraw’ right here: https://www.autodraw.com
Or try ‘Quick Draw’, and help expand the AI’s knowledge base: https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com
Cool, strange and a little frightening.
“How long will it be before computers can create legitimate works of art, or immersive 3D environments just by us describing them?” … Hollywood must be using something like that already, because I dream of a new ALIEN movie, and BAM! – here it comes 😉
Interesting, but it is taking the closest alike in statistical terms from a library. It isn't the same thing as thinking.
This is how Skynet really started. “Draw me a Terminator.”
That is wild!
Yeah it is, really.
The problem is that the program is not 'drawing' anything. It just selects an image drawn by a human designer that matches what you are drawing. There is no creation here, nor any kind of understanding what the drawing is. It just a matter of matching lines to a stored set of other lines (as clearly shown in the clock example).
…the results are only as good as the original 'designer's' result of course, so it's really just another way to proliferate boring clip art.
…for now.
Looking back at this article in 2025 is depressing.