The idea behind Google's Im2Calories technology is simple: You take a photo of your food, it tells you the calorie load. The system recognizes the items on your plate and finds the corresponding calorie info thanks to the magic of AI deep learning. It can take into account quantity, volume (by comparing to other objects in the vicinity), and more.
The goal, according to Popular Science, was to build something that's an aide to those who keep "food diaries" of their daily intake, making it easier to play the dieter's game of calorie counting. If Im2Calories scans wrong, users can correct it. By doing so they'll not only be getting better information, but also improving the deep learning program.The underlying technology may find use in other arenas where calculating weight based on an image would be useful—think of things like shipping.
Work has just begun, so Im2Calories is not ready for the app store. But it's an interesting direction for AI–not just recognizing the world around it, but corresponding objects in that world to a string of values. If Google can convince you to pass on that brownie, then so much the better.
Source: Popular Science via Engadget
