Google Arts & Culture app rolls out the viral ‘selfie feature’ to India

The feature lets users match their selfies with a work of classical art from one of the several art museums globally.

Google Arts and Culture app now lets Indian users use the viral selfie feature that matches selfies with famous artwork. (Kul Bhushan)

Google Arts & Culture app on Friday introduced a new feature in India that lets users take a selfie, upload it and the feature will match it with a work of classical art from one of the several art museums globally.

Using the computer-vision technology, the selfie feature lets users connect with more than 6,000 exhibitions from over 1,500 museum partners across 70 countries.

"We created an experiment that matches the selfie with art from the collections of museums on Google Arts & Culture and over the past few days, people took over 30 million selfies. After its success in the US, we are rolling out this feature to other countries, including India", a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Google Arts & Culture app also shows an estimated percentage that measures visual similarity between the face and the matching artwork.

The platform hosts millions of artifacts and pieces of art, ranging from prehistory to the contemporary which is shared by museums across the world.

Formerly known as the Google Art Project and launched in February 2011, the new initiative from the tech giant aims to make great art more accessible in this digital age, using some of the technology tools that it has created.

The project was launched in collaboration with 17 international museums, including the Tate Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Uffizi in Florence.