Neural networks don’t understand what optical illusions are

Machine-vision systems can match humans at recognizing faces and can even create realistic synthetic faces. But researchers have discovered that the same systems cannot recognize optical illusions, which means they also can’t create new ones.

Human vision is an extraordinary facility. Although it evolved in specific environments over many millions of years, it is capable of tasks that early visual systems never experienced. Reading is a good example, as is identifying artificial objects such as cars, planes, road signs, and so on.

But the visual system also has a well-known set of shortcomings that we experience as optical illusions. Indeed, researchers have identified many ways in which these illusions cause humans to misjudge color, size, alignment, and movement.

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