Quick, Draw pitches your awful drawing skills against Google's AI

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is becoming the next big thing in technology. Google has been making great progress in this field and has recently shown off its highly accurate AI image captioning system.

But the company has more to give. Meet Google’s latest AI experiment called “Quick, Draw.” At first glance, it looks like a simple drawing game designed for kids. But in reality, it’s quite an advanced tool, as it uses neural networks to try and figure the object you’re drawing.

Here’s how it works. Quick, Draw first displays a written word (“boat”, “tree”…) and gives you 20 seconds to draw it using your mouse cursor. The tool will then — with the help of AI — try to figure out what that object is based on your artistic skills. It uses the same technology as Google Translate for handwriting recognition, and of course, learns from its mistakes the more you play with it.

I’ve found the tool to be quite interesting, and although it sounds and looks simple and silly in a way, it’s actually a ton of fun and a bit addictive. After trying it out for the first time, I was prompted to draw a toothbrush, a sink, and a soccer ball. Unfortunately, Google didn’t give me any credit for my work, as it recognized my drawings as a fork, a potato, and a cookie. So, either Google’s new AI tool doesn’t work correctly, or my artistic skills aren’t as good as I’ve thought. I’m leaning more towards the second option.

So, if you want to test out your drawing skills, try the tool out for yourself by clicking the button below. And as always, share your first impressions with us in the comment section.