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Google DeepDream turns everyday grocery-store video into a surreal nightmare

This Google program can make the most normal events look completely trippy.

 

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 23, 2015   Updated on May 27, 2021, 10:31 pm CDT

Google‘s DeepDream code is a recipe for making any photo or video look fiendishly bizarre. YouTube user Pouff used it to great effect in this music video, which uses simple footage from a trip to the grocery store.

DeepDream is an image recognition program that Google is training by feeding it millions of pictures from around the Internet. The program then attempts to recognize similar images—say, human faces—elsewhere, although it isn’t always successful. It gained most of its attention online thanks to the trippy, surreal images it creates as it tries to recognize objects that aren’t actually there.

This video is a perfect example of the phenomenon, as DeepDream conjures up strange-looking dogs and fish all over a totally normal grocery store.

Screengrab via Pouff/YouTube

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*First Published: Sep 23, 2015, 9:16 am CDT