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Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

simonwillison.net

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Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#141

Post by neurostimulant »

SamPatt wrote: post #63

I play competitive Geoguessr at a fairly high level, and I wanted to test this out to see how it compares. It's astonishingly good. It will use information it knows about you to arrive at the answer - it gave me the exact trailhead of a photo I took locally, and when I asked it how, it mentioned that it knows I live nearby. However, I've given it vacation photos from ages ago, and not only in tourist destinations eit…

> when I asked it how, it mentioned that it knows I live nearby.

> The process for how it arrives at the conclusion is somewhat similar to humans. It looks at vegetation, terrain, architecture, road infrastructure, signage, and it just knows seemingly everything about all of them.

Can we trust what the model says when we ask it about how it comes up with an answer?

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#142

Post by GrumpyNl »

hughes wrote: post #7

> I’m confident it didn’t cheat and look at the EXIF data on the photograph, because if it had cheated it wouldn’t have guessed Cambria first. If I was cheating on a similar task, I might make it more plausible by suggesting a slightly incorrect location as my primary guess. Would be interesting to see if it performs as well on the same image with all EXIF data removed. It would be most interesting if it fails, since…

If you ask, where is this photo taken and you provide the EXIF data, why would that be cheating?

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#144

Post by SamPatt »

simonw wrote: post #119
SamPatt wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made it myself. I use Obsidian and the Spaced Repetition plugin, which I highly recommend if you want a super simple markdown format for flashcards and use Obsidian: https://www.stephenmwangi.com/obsidian-spaced-repetition/ There are pre-made Geoguessr decks for Anki. However, I wouldn't recommend using them. In my experience, a fundamental part of spaced repetition's efficacy is in creating the flashcards yourself…

I'd be fascinated to read more about this. I'd love to see a sample screenshot of a few of your cards too.

Sure, I'll write something up later. I'll give you two samples now.

One reason I love the Obsidian + Markdown + Spaced Repetition plugin combo is how simple it is to make a card. This is all it takes:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/sampatt/media@main/posts/2025-04...

The top image is a screenshot from a game, and the bottom image is another screenshot from the game when it showed me the proper location. All I need to do is separate them with a question mark, and the plugin recognizes them as the Q + A sides of a flashcard.

Notice the data at the bottom:

That is all the plugin needs to know when to reintroduce cards into your deck review.

That image is a good example because it looks nothing like the vast majority of Google Street View coverage in the rest of Kenya. Very people people would guess Kenya on that image, unless they have already seen this rare coverage, so when I memorize locations like this and get lucky by having them show up in game, I can often outright win the game with a close guess.

I also do flashcards that aren't strictly locations I've found but are still highly useful. One example is different scripts:

https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/sampatt/media@main/posts/2025-04...

Both Cambodia and Thailand have Google Street View coverage, and given their geographical proximity it can be easy to confuse them. One trick to telling them apart is their language. They're quite different. Of course I can't read the languages but I only need to identify which is which. This is a great starting point at the easier levels.

The reason the pros seem magical is because they're tapping into much less obvious information, such as the camera quality, camera blur, height of camera, copyright year, the Google Street View car itself, and many other 'metas.' It gets to the point where a small smudge on the camera is enough information to pinpoint a specific road in Siberia (not an exaggeration). They memorize all of that.

When possible I make the images for the cards myself, but there are also excellent sources that I pull from (especially for the non-location specific cards), such as Plonkit:

https://www.plonkit.net/

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#145

Post by plsbenice34 »

otterley wrote: post #134
plsbenice34 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you don't want to post a photo, then don't post a photo. Other people have posted photos of me without my consent, how am i meant to stop that? If i posted photos 20 years ago when i was a dumb teenager i cant undo that, either

What’s the impact to you?

I had a stalker in the past. I feel more comfortable without him knowing where i live.

In general i have a strong need for privacy. Not having privacy is generally unsettling, in the same way that i close the door when using a toilet or having a shower. I am disturbed by people that don't seem to have an understanding of that concept.

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#146

Post by aaron695 »

pwg wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #25

I added a section just now with something I had missed: o3 DOES have a loose model of your location fed into it, which I believe is intended to support the new search feature (so it can run local searches). The thinking summary it showed me did not reference that information, but it's still very possible that it used that in its deliberations. I ran two extra example queries for photographs I've taken thousands of mi…

From the addition: > (EXIF stripped via screenshotting) Just a note, it is not necessary to "screenshot" to remove EXIF data. There are numerous tools that allow editing/removal of EXIF data (e.g., exiv2: https://exiv2.org/ , exiftool: https://exiftool.org/ , or even jpegtran with the "-copy none" option https://linux.die.net/man/1/jpegtran ). Using a screenshot to strip EXIF produces a reduced quality image (scaled…

[dead]

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#147

Post by wongarsu »

olex wrote: post #131
joenot443 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super cool, man. Watching pro Geoguessr is my latest break-time activity, these geo-gods never cease to impress me. One thing I'm curious about - in high level play, how much of the meta involves knowing characteristics about the photography/equipment/etc. that Google used when they shot it? Frequently I'll watch rainbolt immediately know an African country from nothing but the road, is there something I'm missing?

In the stream commentary for some of competitive Geoguessr I've watched, they definitely often mention the color and shape of the car (visible edges, shadow, reflections), so I assume pro players know which cars were used where very well.

Also things like follow cars (some countries had government officials follow the streetview car), the season in which coverage was created, camera glitches, the quality of the footage, etc.

There is a lot of "legitimate" knowledge. With just a street you have the type of road surface, its condition, the type of road markings, the bollards, and the type of soil and vegetation next to the road, as well as the presence and type of power poles next to the road, to name a few. But there is also a lot of information leakage from the way google takes streetview footage.

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#148

Post by [deleted] »

qarl wrote: post #104

> I’m confident it didn’t cheat and look at the EXIF data on the photograph, because if it had cheated it wouldn’t have guessed Cambria first. It also, at one point, said it couldn't see any image data at all. You absolutely cannot trust what it says. You need to re-run with the EXIF data removed.

[deleted]

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#149

Post by AstroBen »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #101
pwg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think: "stalker".

If the person is already a stalker you'd think they'd already know this, no? There's that anecdotal stuff in japan where a vlogger was located by her "fans" from a reflexion of their home bus station or something. The weird people will do weird stuff regardless of technology, IMO. And the governments are already doing this for decades at least, so ... I think the tech could be a net benefit, as with many other techno…

> weird people will do weird stuff regardless of technology

If I were someone's only stalker, I'd be absolutely hopeless at finding their location from images. I'm really bad at it if I don't know the location first hand

But now, suddenly with AI I'm close to an expert. The accessibility of just uploading an image to ChatGPT means everyone has an easy way of abusing it, not just a small percentage of the population

Re: Watching o3 guess a photo's location is surreal, dystopian and entertaining

#150

Post by otterley »

plsbenice34 wrote: post #145
otterley wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the impact to you?

I had a stalker in the past. I feel more comfortable without him knowing where i live. In general i have a strong need for privacy. Not having privacy is generally unsettling, in the same way that i close the door when using a toilet or having a shower. I am disturbed by people that don't seem to have an understanding of that concept.

I totally get it. I’m sorry that happened to you.
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