Microsoft create auto-caption bot (and it's terrible)
Microsoft have released a new tool online, called CaptionBot.
It claims to be able to recognise "a broad range of visual concepts" and then caption your photographs based on what it sees. Largely it works quite well, and can caption celebrities with a lot of accuracy.
Unfortunately, it hasn't passed the Twitter test. People have been posting the fails of the CaptionBot, including the time it denied the moon landings and the time it identified Hitler as a baseball player.
First, it threw heat onto "the dress" debate, claiming it was a cat wearing a tie
I was hoping to get a definite answer from https://t.co/b5DYRwRxWz but it's raised a lot more questions pic.twitter.com/WVz4gC9kLi
— Paul Curry (@cr3) April 14, 2016
Then it questioned the veracity of the moon landings
Microsoft's image captioning tool sees through the so-called "moon landings" https://t.co/WWr7O1XeE3 H/T @robmanuel pic.twitter.com/BDd9X4KdNp
— Ralph Harrington (@ralphharrington) April 14, 2016
To be fair, it nailed that this man was about to partake in a strenuous activity
captionbot.ai nailed it pic.twitter.com/BROvlNbgIT
— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) April 13, 2016
But then it thought Hitler was a baseball player
Microsoft's new tool to automatically caption photos has really nailed ithttps://t.co/17caNSFgzl pic.twitter.com/ssEQavzJMd
— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) April 14, 2016
And this elbow is a woman brushing her teeth
Thought I'd see if Microsoft's CaptionBot AI could tell an arse from an elbow (see, funny joke idea) but uhhhhh pic.twitter.com/32ptlSwm1A
— Jonathan Cresswell (@JonathanEx) April 14, 2016
Then it nailed it again
We created @Cluster as a trojan horse to build a huge community of giraffe owners. #CaptionBot reveals the science. pic.twitter.com/7etzg6jDxy
— Brenden Mulligan (@mulligan) April 13, 2016
It thought this coat hook was a floating toilet
Captionbot's failures are more entertaining than its successes. pic.twitter.com/BLgFRdfeeR
— Joel Bernstein (@CastIrony) April 13, 2016
And it thought Brum was a toilet. Please don't use Brum as a toilet.
omg captionbot pic.twitter.com/3ePdM2y6LV
— Carly Page (@CarlyPage_) April 14, 2016
And it refused to identify this particular logo
It work great! #captionbot pic.twitter.com/h8x7LQqMzA
— Giorgio Molinaro (@TetsuoHirashi) April 14, 2016