This AI-Powered Camera Only Takes Award-Winning Photos

Although we all may think we’re decent photographers while snapping our #nofilter Instagram shots, for most of us that’s not the case. But what if there was a way to actually ensure that every picture we took was deserving of praise? With the Trophy Camera, you can.

Developed by Dries Depoorter and Max Pinckers, this prototype uses artificial intelligence to recognize and capture only award-winning images. To accomplish this, the duo used machine learning to train the Trophy Camera with all previous World Press Photos of the Year.

Simply take your photo, and then check to see what the camera says. The gadget’s algorithm works by giving each picture a rating based on how closely it matches up to the World Press Photo winners. If it shares at least 90% of their characteristics, the images are automatically uploaded to the project’s dedicated website.

As for hardware, the Trophy Camera features a Raspberry Pi Zero W along with a Pi Camera Module, an Adafruit Monochrome 128x32 SPI OLED display, anda 5000mAh power bank — which are housed inside plastic casing. There’s also a red switch alongside the screen that acts like a shutter button.

According to Creative Applications, Depoorter and Pinckers employed an assortment of software to bring this idea to life, including Raspbian Jessie, Python, Tensorflow, as well as the Clarifai, Google Vision and Microsoft Emotion APIs.

You can read more about this impressive project here, and in Co.Design’s recent write-up.