The diagram is definitely misleading, as is some of the article.<p>There&#x27;s no high level integration that would allow image recognition, bacteria are AFAIK too simple for that to happen.<p>They may have a cellular automata-like mechanism to detect where the biggest light source is in case there is more than one, or it is diffuse rather than focused.<p>One family of single cell eukaryotes has ocelloids[0] reminiscent of vertebrate and mollusc eyes. Provided nuclear genes form networks conceptually identical to neural nets (i.e. brains), one could imagine that these animals have more elaborate image processing, but I don&#x27;t know if there&#x27;s any concrete evidence for it.<p>--<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ocelloid" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ocelloid</a>