Google working on technology that counts calories in food photos

Google research scientist Kevin Murphy dropped a knowledge bomb on a crowd full of data scientists at the RE.WORK Deep Learning Summit Tuesday. While working on Google's image recognition programs -- algorithms that can analyze a photo and precisely identify items -- he thought of a unique application: Counting calories by analyzing photographs of food. Murphy explained that food photos are the most common type of photos on the web after pictures of actual people. With this developing software, a Google computer can look at an image of, say, eggs, pancakes and bacon, and identify each food. But Murphy's vision goes one step farther: He wants to create an app that looks at the photo, identifies the foods, analyzes the size of the foods, matches the nutritional information for each food, and then spits back the caloric intake of your meal. Snap a pic of your dinner (some of us already do it for Instagram), give it to Google and learn the caloric count of what you're putting into your body.