Google AutoDraw is AI-powered autotune for your terrible doodles

In November last year, Google launched its AI Experiments, a collection of simple AI software that allows anyone to play with the technology in hands-on ways. With the AIs that can emulate handwriting or even play the piano with you, Google has been encouraging coders and the average men alike to interact with AI software.

And its latest may be the first to properly take off.

AutoDraw is a piece of software from the technology that brought you QuickDraw (the AI that tries to be the best Pictionary partner in the world), and it is as fun as it is useful.

Google Autodraw ‘a new web-based tool that pairs machine learning with drawings created by talented artists to help you draw’

“[AutoDraw is] a new web-based tool that pairs machine learning with drawings created by talented artists to help you draw,” writes creative technologist Dan Motzenbecker.

The premise is relatively simple — you doodle to your heart’s content, and Google will offer up more talented artists’ clip art to replace yours.

Google’s teaser provides numerous examples of when AutoDraw may help out the layman: birthday cards, event posters, party fliers, colouring books, and “a giraffe on a house in the sky for no good reason.”

The company are so sold on the fact that this has potential, that AutoDraw has been released for free on phones, computers and tablets.

It’s not hard to see why it has faith — the AI is already pretty useful and will only keep learning and growing. It also allows anyone to procrastinate at work by creating masterpieces like this, so what’s not to like?

Artists are encouraged to submit their own drawings for the ever-growing database — which as of yet provides absolutely no phallic art. And let’s be real: that’s what we’re all waiting for.