AI pareidolia: Can machines spot faces in inanimate objects?

In 1994, Florida jewelry designer Diana Duyser discovered what she believed to be the Virgin Mary’s image in a grilled cheese sandwich, which she preserved and later auctioned for $28,000. But how much do we really understand about pareidolia, the phenomenon of seeing faces and patterns in objects when they aren’t really there? 

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alt="The “Faces in Things” dataset is a comprehensive, human-labeled collection of over 5,000 pareidolic images. The research team trained face-detection algorithms to see faces in these pictures, giving insight into how humans learned to recognize faces within their surroundings (Credits: Alex Shipps/MIT CSAIL)."
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