The artificial intelligence programs that Facebook is developing to analyze photos are getting extremely good.
Mike Schroepfer, Facebook, gave some examples during a speech to reporters at the Web Summit in Dublin this week. Facebook has a program that can look at a photo of an infant and figure out that it’s looking at a baby, and describe what the baby is doing. Facebook is also working on artificial intelligence that could look at a stack of bricks and judge whether they’re about to fall over.
"The most shared content on social media is photos and videos," said Mike Schroepfer.
"Most of your brain is dedicated to processing images. So one of the key points for developing systems that work is teaching computers to understand the visual world," he added.
While a computer program that can babysit babies and help people outsmart Jenga might sound fun, Facebook has more practical uses for artificial intelligence. The technology could be used to describe images to the visually impaired or search through vast amounts of data for news that is relevant to users.
Facebook, which established an artificial intelligence research center in Paris this summer, is not the only company doing this. Both Google and Microsoft have begun similar projects, aiming to take image analysis to the next level.
