VERY interesting - as soon as I read the title, I thought &quot;finally, this will really tell me whether deep earning is bullshit or not!&quot;.  Why?  Because my understanding is that colorization is basically magic, like, how can you possibly get the color of a telephone handset out of a black and white image?  In fact, you can&#x27;t!  Here&#x27;s the set of the Addams Family:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcodesign.com&#x2F;3021327&#x2F;asides&#x2F;the-addams-familys-living-room-was-pink" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcodesign.com&#x2F;3021327&#x2F;asides&#x2F;the-addams-family...</a><p>Totally all over the map.  So I thought this would be such a fantastic, fantastic way to compare my knowledge of the world with a punk algorithm&#x27;s.<p>I didn&#x27;t read the key&#x2F;legend&#x2F;explanation - as soon as I saw the first set of 3 images, I knew the middle lamp was the true color, and the right lamp was generated; because lampshades overwhelmingly look like the middle picture (in my mind) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=lampshade" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=lampshade</a> not that weird blue color.<p>&quot;Ha, stupid algorithm&quot;, I thought.  &quot;Who has a blue lampshade&quot;.  this algrithm doesn&#x27;t even come close.<p>Then I kept scrolling with that assumption, and it got worse and worse - wow that photographer&#x27;s color is like blood orange, the algorithm doesn&#x27;t even know it&#x27;s a person!  This is terrible.  Where does that truck get that green trim, nobody would choose that, straight out of left field.<p>Until I got to the field with wolves.  Why are the flowers&#x27; colors missing from the middle picture? This doesn&#x27;t look right at all.<p>Then I read the caption.  The middle images are the generated ones; the right-hand images are reality.<p>For five 5 of 6 images, I thought that the generated image was &quot;obviously&quot; an actual photo, and much more plausible in colors than the right-hand real photos.  Continuing to scroll, for the park bench also I think the middle image is much closer to how I imagine it.<p>So we are at the stage where an algorithm generates a much more plausible view of reality, with rare exceptions, than actual reality.  This is pretty impressive.