AI And Social Media Measure the Esthetic Beauty of Nature
November 4, 2021
Artificial intelligence armed with machine learning algorithms can practically do anything these days from detecting deforestation in the Amazon to accessing the contents of a photo. TechXplore shares how AI can now determine a landscape’s beauty: “Social Media And AI Can Measure The Aesthetic Quality Of Landscapes.” EPFL and Wageningen University scientists developed an ecosystem modeling tool from Flickr photos and deep learning.
The model was fed nine million photos of British landscapes and it is the first project to take into consideration how people appreciate their surroundings. The landscape aesthetic model was built with:
“To develop their model, the scientists trained a deep-learning algorithm on over 200,000 photos of landscapes in Great Britain obtained from the Scenic-Or-Not database. These photos, comprising a geographically representative dataset of Great Britain, were rated according to their aesthetic quality, or “scenicness,” through a crowdsourced survey. This approach enabled the scientists to include factors addressing how individuals enjoy landscapes personally—factors that are missing from conventional large-scale ES assessments. The research team then ran their deep-learning model, which is based on neural networks, on over nine million Flickr pictures, also integrating other AI-based models in their predictions of scenic beauty. Finally, they compared the output from their model with the results of a more conventional, environmental indicator-based model.”
Results were overlaid on a map of Great Britain, where color coding was used to determine the most scenic areas. Natural landscapes were deemed the most beautiful, while urban areas were not. Weather and seasonal patterns were also factored into the results. The scientists hope to apply their landscape modeling to other countries and learn if there are any differences how people appreciate scenery.
Social media influencers cold use the algorithm to determine the best place to take photos with their outfits, food, or sponsored products. The AI would also rank the top of Mt. Everest very low, because of the amount of trash and dead bodies.
Whitney Grace, November 4, 2021
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