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I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
181–190 of 302 posts
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the em-dash ever "necessary"? It was beloved by nerds on the internet long before there was any whisper of LLMs on the internet. What do you think chatbots are imitating if not humans who also use it?
I never saw a human use it in something different from literature. That's where I think the chatbots got it.
I use it sometimes, although I'll probably stop now that I keep hearing it's too associated with ai. It's easy to enter though on Mac it's just option shift hyphen
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#183Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free.
We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than people trying to visually estimate portion size, but the truth is both are quite inaccurate.
Most people won't spend the time to track, so photo logging is a faster and easier approximation. If you want more accurate logging you should use the voice logging feature and a kitchen scale (also completely free in our app).
As many mention the goal is to learn, not to tediously track every little thing. Do what's sustainable for you and helps achieve your health and fitness goals.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#184Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…
What about when people give up because you massively underestimate their calories?
Or when people develop eating disorders because you massively overestimate their calories?
If the goal is to learn then accurate information is important, although I suppose it's harder to get a VC to fund.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#185[dead]
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#186Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…
What about when people give up because you massively underestimate their calories? Or when people develop eating disorders because you massively overestimate their calories? If the goal is to learn then accurate information is important, although I suppose it's harder to get a VC to fund.
What about the people that would have given up on the diet without even trying because they just cba to do it "properly"?
Ultimately, there is no silver bullet in nutrition.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#187I'm working on an app in this area [1], and I've spent a lot of time exploring how to responsibly use AI for food tracking.
My conclusion is that while AI is excellent for augmenting your tracking experience, it's not yet reliable enough to be the primary tracking method. Consistency is key to successful food tracking, and AI can certainly help users avoid the common issue of missing a meal and losing momentum. However, inaccuracies, like consistently being off by 100-200 calories per day, can significantly impact results, especially for those on lower-calorie diets (like 1,200-1,500 calories/day, which is common for many women due to their physical size).
With FitBee I landed on communicating to the user that these are estimates and you probably shouldn't use it as your primary method of tracking calories.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#188The article claims that none of these apps use "depth analysis", but newer iPhones have this capability. I would guess at least some of these apps are using some kind of volumetric analysis for the food when available.
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#189Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…
Do you use the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone for your predictions?
Re: I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected
#190Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…
Do you use the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone for your predictions?
We do! You can read about our original approach back at Google AI in our CVPR publication here:
https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2021/papers/Thames...
We've since come up with a much more accurate approach. That said we also try to do some advanced technique to figure out what people were trying to log and not what the amount of food in the photo was. So for example if take a bite out of a bagel, we'll try to say 1 bagel since it's unlikely you wanted to log a bagel less a bite.