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Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

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Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#101

Post by subcosmos »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #85

You have a business opportunity here if you train that on fresh vegetables. Many people have trouble with these issues: 1. Knowing what the hell a (example) rhubarb is or looks like. 2. Knowing if it looks fresh or about to go bad. Being able to aim a camera slowly across an isle with it getting highlighted would solve first problem. Spinning vegetable around in front of the camera would could solve second. So, try t…

You know, its funny. being a former fat guy, Im not entirely familiar with all of my vegetables. I took this app to a farmers market recently and it was actually helping me identify a few things ...

Had never seen a beet before un-cut. Ashamed of my ignorance ;)

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#102

Post by subcosmos »

solaxun wrote: post #83

I've been thinking of this exact thing for a few years now, good to see others are interested too. I think there is HUGE potential for an app that can accurately (within a reasonable error range) count macro-nutrients through pictures of food, but I think that is WAY more difficult than you would imagine. How can you train a classifier to tell how much butter is in a dish? How can you account for food that is literal…

Another angle is post-consumption. Ive always wondered if precisely monitoring body temperature might tell you something about consumption, since there is this 'thermic effect of food'. Would be hard to get right though ...

In the lab, we can use doubly-labelled water to precisely measure calorie intake and burn, but its so damned expensive. If only it were commercially viable.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#103

Post by subcosmos »

gchristen wrote: post #65

Hey Subcomos, great work! We've been working on something pretty similar, an app called Logameal (only available in the UK). We have run into (are running into) a lot of those UI issues too and would be glad to help. Let me know if you'd like to chat.

Your UI looks great!

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#104

Post by nickpsecurity »

subcosmos wrote: post #101
nickpsecurity wrote: post #85

You have a business opportunity here if you train that on fresh vegetables. Many people have trouble with these issues: 1. Knowing what the hell a (example) rhubarb is or looks like. 2. Knowing if it looks fresh or about to go bad. Being able to aim a camera slowly across an isle with it getting highlighted would solve first problem. Spinning vegetable around in front of the camera would could solve second. So, try t…

You know, its funny. being a former fat guy, Im not entirely familiar with all of my vegetables. I took this app to a farmers market recently and it was actually helping me identify a few things ... Had never seen a beet before un-cut. Ashamed of my ignorance ;)

I live in a semi-rural area. Gives me a bit more experience. I still don't know what all these things are in the supermarket, though. So, I can't judge. ;)

That said, you should try training it on different kinds of produce that look very similar. One example I recall is Zucchini vs Cucumber as the stem at one side is the giveaway. Another is Nappa Cabbage vs Romaine Lettuce. Only two examples I could think of off top of head that would confuse people.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#106

Post by kbenson »

subcosmos wrote: post #93
nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

I have considered something like this as a business model, although I was thinking of nutrition coaching instead of mere logging itself, but thats actually a really great idea.

I wouldn't pay $5 a day. I would pay $30 a month. Mechanical turk, with a note that the picture needs to contain some sort of scale (and a request to manually scale the item if you didn't include one and it's not obvious), would probably take you pretty far.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#107

Post by subcosmos »

misiti3780 wrote: post #92
koolba wrote: post #75

Someone should combine this AI with something like Google glass (so you don't have to pull out your phone), a basic calorie/nutrition filter, and a shock bracelet[1]. That way when I look at a Krispy Kreme donut I get immediate feedback! [1]: http://pavlok.com/hello.php

google glass is dead though right ?

In some niche areas it's really useful. Some people I know recently raised 17M to build software for surgeons. Looking forward to seeing more uses like this.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#108

Post by HamSession »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

I agree with your suggestions for human assessment because of problem posed by food calories varying significantly due to different preparations.

Take for example soda, if I gave you a picture of soda in a glass could you tell it was diet or regular? You might scoff at such an edge case but it quickly becomes more common when looking into food perpetration techniques. This is why caloric estimation is a really difficult and causes restaurants to not list their calories as the calories of a meal do not equal the sum of it's parts.

All these solutions are common as people want a signal to tell them to stop eating, but these are insufficient as people will simply ignore it due to hunger cravings (as happens on diets). Any nutritionist service in addition to detailing calories would need to incentive the patient to recognize the need to lose weight or setup a helpline.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#109

Post by nacs »

misiti3780 wrote: post #92
koolba wrote: post #75

Someone should combine this AI with something like Google glass (so you don't have to pull out your phone), a basic calorie/nutrition filter, and a shock bracelet[1]. That way when I look at a Krispy Kreme donut I get immediate feedback! [1]: http://pavlok.com/hello.php

google glass is dead though right ?

It changes month to month.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#110

Post by dvirsky »

subcosmos wrote: post #93
nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

I have considered something like this as a business model, although I was thinking of nutrition coaching instead of mere logging itself, but thats actually a really great idea.

I remember there was an app like that a couple of years ago, that didn't really take off. Don't remember the name or story.
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