Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/02/i-tested-geospys-photo-location-detection-skills-with-my-personal-photos-results-wow.html
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I didn’t get results quite as accurate, but still pretty impressive.
Results were mixed for shots of the NYC suburb where I live. It said one was in Philadelphia, one was upstate, one was one town over from the real location, and it correctly identified one specific building.
I gave it a shot of mushrooms growing in gravel in San Francisco, which it placed in Ireland. To be fair, this one didn’t have much identifying information.
It identified a shot from the Bay Area Discovery Museum as being from the San Francisco Zoo, but that’s pretty close.
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It was strangely bad in the scary way AI can be for me.
A photo taken in Evansville indiana during the eclipse was confidently located in canada because of the trees and the no trespassing sign in the background that is in english and french (there is no sign in the background).
A gothic mansion in Evansville was confidently identified as the Kelton House Museum in Columbus Ohio, which doesn’t look vaguely similar.
A photo from a small town in quitana roo, mexico was confidently identified as from Havana because of the spanish language graffiti and plants.
But the weirdest was a photo from inside the Yard House Pub in King of Prussia, PA was identified as a Yard House Pub in Colorado, because of the rock mountains outside the windows (again, KoP - no mountains).
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I gave it a picture that included the name of a business on the side of that very business, that also included a street sign that should have enabled it to identify not only the state but the city. It did identify the state, but came up blank on the city. I’m not sure why. I basically tossed it a soft ball and it made contact, but hit it foul.
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It can be fooled. I gave it a picture of a moon gate at the Montreal botanical gardens which it confidently proclaimed was a park in Shanghi China. On the other hand, it correctly identified a beach picture as being on the gulf coast of Florida strictly from the color of the sand.
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I’m running at like 0/20. Even when including business names or prominent locations. It correctly identified a picture from a zoo as being a zoo, but misidentified the state. A picture from a midwest renaissance festival was misidentified as being in Texas, and another picture from the same day was identified as the New York state fair. A picture at a christmas tree farm in the midwest was identified as a similarly named one in a different state. Random pictures without identifying things are labeled as random midwest states, and sometimes northeast. I’m honestly surprised you can point to a bunch of successes as it hasn’t gotten a single one correct for me. It also thought that a lego sculpture of a panda in the background of one shot was a panda at the columbus zoo (which as far as I can tell only had pandas for a few months in the 90s).
Pretty abysmal from my experience.
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Country: Italy
City: Rome
Explanation: The photo was taken in Rome, Italy. This can be determined by the architecture of the buildings, the cobblestone streets, and the vegetation. The coordinates of the photo are 41.902783, 12.496365.
It is in Rome, but the coordinates are wrong. There is no road surface, cobblestone or otherwise, in the photo.
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at first i thought maybe in the reflection of the building’s door, but then i remembered that in italian “cobblestone” is also the word for “tabby”. it’s possible i hallucinated that… 
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What happens when it is fed “AI” generated photos?
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The fake explanation and coordinates make me wonder if this is from a standardised set of answers to make it seem smarter than it is, and less creepy, when it relies on embedded GPS information. I think location data is embedded with a lot of modern phones?
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Quite possibly, but it didn’t get any GPS coordinates from the metadata in my photo. I took it in 2007 using a digital stills camera.
However, it GeoSpy has ingested the contents of Flickr it would know that the photo is in my Rome album.
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Now this one is amusing.
Country: Poland
Explanation: The architecture of the building in the image is consistent with that of Poland. The building is made of wood and has a traditional Polish roof. The trees in the image are also consistent with those found in Poland. The image was possibly taken in the city of Warsaw.
Coordinates: 52.237049, 21.017532
This is actually in Alexandrowka in Potsdam, and GeoSpy is mistaking Russian folk architecture for Polish.
The really funny part is that the first photo in the “related buildings and locations” section is the same house in Alexandrowka, taken from almost exactly the same position and angle, and correctly identified as “Potsdam Russian Colony”.
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I’ve been playing When Taken lately. You have to guess both the location and year of five different photos. Really a fun game, and a quick hit.
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It was correct in telling me this was near Breckenridge, but got the summit name wrong. Very close.
This was a bust and shows a little insight into the algorithm. This was shot just west of Durango in a different mountain range that looks different than the Elks.
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I used a picture taken in Annapolis, MD on the Severn River with Naval Academy buildings visible.
The result, State: Michigan
City: Muskegon
Explanation: The photo was taken on a boat on Muskegon Lake. The Muskegon County Courthouse is visible in the background.
Coordinates: 43.2324° N, 86.2495° W
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The cats extra-muscular forelegs indicates it walks on uneven surfaces, and the wear pattern on the paws points to cobblestone.
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Pretty bad. I tried some pictures of laneways from various towns in Australia, and it incorrectly identified every one as being in Melbourne as it seems to think that only Melbourne has laneways.
The local war memorial was identified as being in Canberra, even though the maps reference shows something that doesn’t look at all like it.
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I tried this photo twice. It’s Point Cabrillo in Mendocino County. The first time I got Pacific Grove, CA, but it’s actually 200+ miles north (as the corvid flies). The second attempt got me closer:
Then I tried east coast:
It’s close, but it’s really Bayview Beach in Maine. I feel like its strength is that it can distinguish west coast from east coast.
Then I tried an outdoor amphitheater in San Bernadino County (Redlands Bowl) and it thought it was the John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood, which is odd because the Ford is slightly more grand than the cute Redlands city amphitheater.
I always keep my gps turned off and I deny location permissions for my camera app.
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