Google’s Neural Network Guesses Image Location
An interesting question is how PlaNet performs so well without being able to use the cues that humans rely on, such as vegetation, architectural style, and so on. But Weyand and co say they know why: “We think PlaNet has an advantage over humans because it has seen many more places than any human can ever visit and has learned subtle cues of different scenes that are even hard for a well-traveled human to distinguish.”
They go further and use the machine to locate images that do not have location cues, such as those taken indoors or of specific items. This is possible when images are part of albums that have all been taken at the same place. The machine simply looks through other images in the album to work out where they were taken and assumes the more specific image was taken in the same place.
Read more @ MIT Technology Review