With Google’s I/O 2018 Developers Conference set to take place in just a few days, the company has now revealed a fun new game-like experience to get everybody hyped up about A.I. Called, Emoji Scavenger Hunt, the activity effectively shows users an emoji and then tasks them with finding a real-world object to match. Although this is technically a web-based game, users will probably want to use their camera-enabled smartphone since that’s how the underlying code is programmed to work. For example, it might show a key or a shoe and users will need to use their camera to search for the object. Players are timed and given points for each real-world object they find that the emoji is intended to represent. Once the object is found, the neural network will recognize the object and move the player to the next level.
The experience is built on Google’s Tensorflow.js. That’s an open-source framework which utilizes JavaScript and centers around machine learning. Google has pointed out that A.I. is going to play a central part in the companies efforts moving forward and, as a result, will be a major part of this year’s I/O event. That’s set to start in just a few days, on May 8, and will run through May 10. So it makes a lot of sense for Google to be launching the Emoji Scavenger Hunt now. However, it isn’t just intended to be a bit of fun for a boring afternoon. Google says it’s supposed to show off how far along its neural networking has come and, in fact, the breadth of more serious applications it can be used for.
This may just be the perfect way to provide that perspective since emoji tend to range across a wide variety of objects, expressions, and more abstract representations. Moreover, while the camera is being moved around, the A.I. actively identifies objects it is seeing in a bubble along the bottom. So if it gets pointed at a tree, a guitar, a pair of sunglasses, or an angry cat, for example, it seems more than capable of identifying those things – or any other objects or things describable with an emoji.
Check Out Google's Emoji Scavenger Hunt