system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is the overall goal/point of google deep dream?
gpt
Google deep dream was developed as a test of Google's image recognition software.  Basically, they're running it backwards - rather than taking a picture of a dog, and asking the software "Is that a dog"; they take a random picture and ask the software "show me what looks like a dog".  By seeing what the software draws, you can determine what characteristics it uses to determine a dog.

For instance, back in the early days of image recognition, the department of defense thought they'd trained a computer to recognize tanks in pictures.  It turned out they'd actually trained the tank to recognize sunny days, because the tank pictures were all taken on a sunny day, and the no-tank pictures on a cloudy day.  Google deep dream, for instance, discovered the Google Image recognition thinks dumbbells have a human arm attached to them.

Then they released it to the public because it makes cool pictures.