Google Arts & Culture App Museum Selfie Match Feature: How to Use It Outside US

The museum selfie match feature of Google Arts & Culture app has gone viral soon after the feature was released. Google added the museum selfie match feature to the Arts & Culture app on Monday, and it took the feature no time to go viral on both Android and iOS. The feature allows users to find their “selfie doppelganger” by matching their selfies to objects in the Arts & Culture app’s database. Google has made the museum selfie match feature available in only the US officially, but that has, predictably, not stopped users from accessing it in other countries.

How to use Google museum app’s selfie match feature outside the US

Though anyone can download and use the Google Arts & Culture app, the museum selfie match feature is currently region locked to US and not available in India and other countries. However, using a VPN service can allow you to access to the selfie matching feature in India. Here is a simple guide on how to do that.

1. Start by downloading the Google Arts & Culture from Google Play Store or App Store. Do not open the app before the next step.
2. Now, download a VPN – we recommend the Opera VPN app, available from the Play Store or App Store due to its reliability and ease to use. Once installed, open the Opera VPN app. Click on ‘Switch location’ under the Device Location tab, and select United States from the list.
3. Once the location is changed, open the Google Arts & Culture app. Scroll down till a card appears titled “Is your portrait in a museum?” Click on Get Started and then select I Accept.
4. The app will then ask for permission to access your front camera. Align your face in the provided frame, which will prompt the app to click a photo. The database and pattern recognition software now come into play, with the app scanning for similar portraits. Once done, it will display the four best matched options to choose from.

The Google app also displays the percentage of match for each image. Additionally, the Google Arts & Culture app will reveal the name of the selected portraits along with the museum it belongs to.

According to Google, the Google Arts & Culture app makes use of pattern recognition to recognise face patterns and understand characteristics of different faces. It looks for properties such as beards, glasses etc to select relevant portraits from its database.

Who do you look like the most? Let us know via the comments.