Google is working on a new form of image recognition technology which can automatically work out what landmarks are in your photos, no geotagging required!
Google presented a paper at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Miami, Florida, yesterday, outlining its clever new tech. Take an untagged photo of a famous landmark, enter its URL into the search engine, and Google will draw from its database of Picasa photos and tour guide webpages to tell you what it is.
Unusually, Google’s announced the work despite there being no current plans for a Google service based on it yet, but it’s an interesting pointer of what’s to come. If the number of landmarks it can recognise (Around 50,000 at the moment) expands, it could remove the need for geotagging your photos on holiday, and could even provide locations of objects in photos on Google Image Search automatically.
It’s early days still of course, but it’s good to know Google is working on what could be the next area for search – within pictures.
Out TBC | £TBC | Google
