Problems with Image Search

tldr; We note several problems with image search circa Nov 2018.

Categorical object recognition is great

If we search for ‘truck’ on Flickr, we get the following.

So far, so good.

Attribute-based object recognition is not so great

If we search for ‘brown truck’, we get

Not so good. Google Image Search does better:

although we get some trucks that are clearly not brown.

Now, if we go for ‘brown toy truck’,

or ‘vintage brown truck’,

the additional adjective returns more search results that are incorrect.

Logical combinations of attributes are terrible

If we try ‘brown or white truck’ (or similar terms like ‘brown truck or white truck’),

Google Image Search gives us trucks which are both brown and white.

Searching ‘non-yellow trucks’

returns pretty much all yellow trucks.

Its attribute-based classifier is clearly not taking logical propositions into account.