Animals in Random Images
One thing I’ve tried to stress here is combining things in out-of-the-box ways. This is a perfect example: Michael Trott used ImageIdentify to detect animal-like shapes in random noise.
I like the Petroglyph-like results. I also like the concept behind it: take something that is ordinarily meaningless and find meaning by imposing order on it.
Recognition algorithms like this give the computer the ability to look for shapes in clouds, and I think that’s something that has been under-explored. Rather than trying to construct an elaborate set of rules for how to build something, we can now tell the computer what the result should be like, and let it look for almost-right things on its own.
Machine pareidolia can be used creatively.