Benjamin Grosser visualized how computers “watch” movies through vision algorithms and artificial intelligence in Computers Watching Movies.
Computers Watching Movies was computationally produced using software written by the artist. This software uses computer vision algorithms and artificial intelligence routines to give the system some degree of agency, allowing it to decide what it watches and what it does not. Six well-known clips from popular films are used in the work, enabling many viewers to draw upon their own visual memory of a scene when they watch it.
Above is the bag scene from American Beauty. Contrast this with the more frantic Inception scene, and you get a good idea of how it works. See computer-watching scenes for several more movies here.