Google Image Labeler

Google Image Labeler is a game based on a neat little idea that could save the world…Well maybe not quite, but at least it will allow those who are easily distracted by inane games to help solve one of the net’s growing problems - how to tag images.

The game launched today and is based on Luis von Ahn’s ESP Game. It hooks up two random users and asks them to add a descriptive label, or tag, to a displayed image. If both individuals come up with the same tag, then chance are that this is a good descriptive keywords for the image in question and will be added to the Google images index as a label for this image. Next time someone searches for that keyword, they are more likely to get accurate results returned, at least for those images that have been through the game.

Is it open to abuse? You betcha! The real saddos in the world will sign up and deliberately try to mislabel the images they see, which will waste Google’s server resources, but their tags will not match their counterpart in the game except on very, very rare occasions or if someone sends out a meme that catches on to label everything as “Bush Idiot” and “sky-blue pink” or something similar.

If the idea proper catches on it could save millions of dollars in underpaid labor by pushing the salary scale way below the minimum wage, but at least if you play you’ll be helping to save the world!

You can give it a try here and you can watch von Ahn describing the possibilities of so-called “human computation” here: