As if your Instagram feed weren’t already flooded with food photos of varying quality, Google recently announced a project that could lead to the filtering of even more aerial plate pictures.
At an artificial-intelligence conference last week, Google research scientist Kevin P. Murphy presented a project that, if it’s ever brought to market, could allow people to count the calories in their Instagram photos. Popular Science reports that the project, called Im2Calories, uses “sophisticated deep learning algorithms” and pattern recognition to identify each piece of food in a photo, analyze the portion size by determining its ratio on the plate, and give the user an estimation of how many calories they’ve consumed.
Though the counter is far from accurate now (it’s still in tests), Murphy said that it’s designed to get smarter the more people use it. Google did recently file a patent for the technology, but spokesperson Jason Freidenfelds told CNET that Im2Calories is still in the research phase and Google doesn’t currently have plans for its release. Just imagine what Instagram would look like if you not only had to scroll past all that avocado toast but also every single latte leaf and sad-looking salad.
