Google's Artificial Intelligence handle DeepMind is developing an application that can estimate the calories in your Instagram photos with a patent for protection already filed in government.
First revealed at RE.WORK's Deep Learning Summit in Boston, Google's app in the works would leverage deep algorithms to estimate the calories in food photos uploaded in Instagram. Bought for $500 million in 2014 by Google, DeepMind developed the complex technology behind this diet-conscious app.
Tagged as "Im2Calories", the calorie calculator does not require any technical resolution specifications for the photos it would evaluate, and can easily assess all kinds of Instagram snapshots. Similar to various deep-learning technologies, the food app makes us of visual analysis and pattern recognition to examine still food images. Hence, it banks on the galaxy of data Google has about food and calories.
Amazingly, users can help the app be more accurate in its calculations by adjusting the application's navigation panels. For example, if Im2Calories assumes that the egg it scanned was fried when in reality it was poached, the user can simply correct the misreading using the dropdown menu.
Time along with a bunch of food manufacturers are skeptical about the positive impact the app can actually bring to people on Instagram given the imprecise readings it may sometime provide.
People at DeepMind admitted that they were expecting gaps and glitches in the initial testing of the product, but said that they are committed in improving it as their database of user knowledge grows.
"If it only works 30 percent of the time, it's enough that people will start using it, we'll collect data, and it'll get better over time," DeepMind ascertained.
With obesity still plaguing America's well being, Google's Im2Calories can attract a lot of users, schools and even medical institutions that aim to address issues related with health.
