Based on recent reports, Google is developing a new calorie counting app for Instagram’s food photos. The endeavor is not just an attempt to lend a helping hand to people who want to lose weight, but also a personal ambition that the search giant has set for itself when it comes to developing image recognition technology.
Google plans to take image recognition technology to the next level with the new app that the company is developing for Instagram. Rumor has it, Google is developing a new calorie counting app for Instagram’s food photos, which can identify the objects in the pics without any additional description.
Most image recognition software rely on captions and pic descriptions to identify the objects contained therein, but the Android maker claims there is a better way. The Im2Calories project that the firm has recently unveiled during the Rework Deep Learning Summit in Boston, in USA can successfully identify food items in images and count calories.
No file names and captions are being used in the new image recognition technology, even though the program has proven itself incredibly accurate. The mechanisms behind this advanced technology have not yet been disclosed by Google developers as the company plans to make other improvements to the software in the future.
Analysts attending the Rework Deep Learning Summit in Boston, in the USA were, nonetheless, impressed by the numerous tasks that the program can successfully accomplish. The app has identified three slices of bacon, two eggs and two pancakes. The calorie estimations that the Instagram app has provided were also accurate, according to analysts.
Regular face recognition techniques do not require so much precision on behalf of the app. It is easier to classify pics based on the faces and objects they contain, whereas food and calorie counting photos can be hard to label as their content has a lot to do with portion sizes.
Google’s project is all the more remarkable when we take into consideration the numerous recognition processes that the software has to go through in order to correctly identify the food and to estimate its caloric content. Two identical food pictures could, thus, be included in two different categories depending on the size of the portions, developers have explained.
There are many uses that one may establish for the upcoming calorie counting Instagram, but analysts expect fitness app developers to evince the most interest. The new food photo recognition technology could simplify diets and effectively suggest people which products they should consume and which they should avoid.
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