Google Figures Out How to Make People Care About Art: Selfies

Internet users started doing something strange last week: posting selfies accompanied by famous works of art. It all sprang from the sudden popularity of something called the Google Arts & Culture app, which introduced a new feature that uses facial recognition to match a person’s likeness to a renowned painting that hangs in a museum around the world.

The Google art app is actually a few years old. But the “Search with your selfie” feature, introduced in December, started catching on about a week ago, thanks in part to a BuzzFeed article and some old-fashioned internet virality. There was a nice irony to the rapid spread of art selfies across the web. Just as Facebook was pledging to move away from gaudy videos and streams of suffocating political commentary, here was Google coming to the rescue, giving everyone a reason to start posting pictures of themselves again.