How to download Google Art Selfie tool in UK: Google finally lets you compare your selfies to art

The Google art selfie tool has finally arrived in the UK after having launched in the US earlier this year. The selfie tool, which is part of Google’s Arts and Culture app, was held off from landing on this side of the Atlantic until now – although you could previously access it with a VPN.

To download and use the art selfie tool all you have to do is head to the Google Play Store and download the Google Arts and Culture app and snap away. Having already gone hands-on with the tool earlier this year, Alphr‘s Alan Martin went through the rigorous process of analysing the office to see which artworks they most resembled.

Here’s his take on the Google art selfie tool:

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I have never been much of an art aficionado. Growing up, through no lack of trying from my parents’, the best part of a gallery for me was the gift shop, closely followed by the inevitable puffy bank of seating to sit and stew upon how unfair life was at that particular moment.

Google has the perfect way of interesting that kind of peculiarly self-obsessed breed of mind: its Arts and Culture application has been updated to let you take a selfie and find your match from 70,000 portraits in art galleries around the world. AI does the heavy lifting here, looking for similarities in facial features such as the eyes and the shape and sizes of noses and mouths.

This is me with particularly floofy hair this morning. As you can see, I’m a dead ringer for Paulus van Vianen. Separated at birth, you might say. Well, at birth and by 370 years.

Going back a little further in time, to 1578, Alphr’s Vicky bears a 40% resemblance to Anne Fernely, wife of Sir Thomas Gresham, Tom is 42% of Sir William Pepperell and Ed makes for a passable harp-playing King David.

None of these are hugely flattering, but hey, it could be worse. You could be compared to a cherub-like boy as Monica was, given a side-on shot like Alex, or – worst of all – be loitering around the “Toilet of a Roman Lady” as Vaughn was last seen doing.

While the app won’t let you upload pictures to find that shot where you just happen to be standing naked in a shell-like Venus, you can switch cameras, which gives you the option to take snaps of photos. From there, I went straight to my happy place: looking up pictures of Ed Miliband.

…and after finding Ed’s 16th-century doppelganger, it’s only fair to put David Cameron through his paces:

What the hell. Let’s put the current leaders in the spotlight:

And yes, I know what you’re waiting for. Emilia Spoor-van Wickevoirt Crommelin has the unfortunate distinction of looking a bit like Donald Trump.

So how can you join the fun if you’re region locked out? Read on…

How to get the Google Arts and Culture App selfie mode outside the UK

Yes, you can go straight to the App Store or Google Play and download the Google Arts and Culture app – but unless you’re in the US or UK, you’ll likely not see the selfie mode. The region detection seems to be cloud-based too, so you can’t just side-load the American or UK version of the app and suddenly get the feature. To all intents and purposes, the apps are the same.

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What you need is a VPN. You can read about the best VPNs here, but for a bit of throwaway fun, you probably want a quick, easy and – most importantly – free solution. I used CyberGhost on Android and it worked like a charm. Download it here (Android) or here (iOS), activate the seven-day trial and pick a US or UK city: New York and Seattle worked for us.

Then close the Google Arts and Culture app and restart it. If it has worked, the selfie function should appear four items down.