For decades, the American magazine Life was a major player in the development of photojournalism and produced millions of iconic photographs, leaving behind a staggeringly large archive. In March 2018, Google Arts & Culture released Life Tags, a project that "organizes [about 6.5] million images from the Life magazine archives into an interactive encyclopedia using machine learning." This vast searchable archive employs an array of interesting tags, ranging from mundane objects like "coffeemaker" to intriguing entries like "weedy seadragon," which visitors can use to explore the images. As Google explains in Life Tags' opening intro, its artificial intelligence algorithm automatically tagged and cataloged all the items it recognized in the images, which has led to some amusing miscategorizations, such as piano keyboards that show up under the "computer" tag. Regardless, this resource offers a fun way to explore an influential part of American history.
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