Using TensorFlow and Azure to Add Image Classification to Your Android Apps

TensorFlow is a well established, open source machine learning and deep learning framework that can be used to create and run a wide range of different models, usually using powerful machines in the cloud. In addition, TensorFlow also supports running models on mobile devices through the TensorFlow.Mobile library, taking advantage of the hardware acceleration available on modern phones to run models incredibly fast on low powered mobile devices. In this post, we'll discuss how to build an image classifier to identify different fruits using the Azure Custom Vision service, and create a simple Android app to use this model to classify images. Creating ML models can be time consuming and require large data sets. To make it easier to create image classification models, Microsoft has created the Custom Vision Service, which uses a technique called transfer learning to allow you to train an image classifier using only a small number of images, instead of the thousands that traditionally would be required to train such a model.