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Wolfram, creator of Siri’s knowledge base, releases impressive new Image Identification tech

Wolfram Research, the company behind the Wolfram Alpha knowledge base that Apple’s Siri taps into, is today releasing new artificial intelligence tech to answer the question, “What is this a picture of?”

Wolfram is showing off what the Wolfram Language Image Identification Project is capable of using this web app accessible on desktop and mobile devices. You simply drag any photo into the app and the image identification AI attempts to detect what it is (as pictured above).

Now I’m excited to be able to say that we’ve reached a milestone: there’s finally a function called ImageIdentify built into the Wolfram Language that lets you ask, “What is this a picture of?”—and get an answer…. It’s a nice practical example of artificial intelligence. But to me what’s more important is that we’ve reached the point where we can integrate this kind of “AI operation” right into the Wolfram Language—to use as a new, powerful building block for knowledge-based programming.

And the new ImageIdentify function will be accessible to developers to create APIs or apps that tap into the feature through Wolfram Language“And if one had lots of photographs, one could immediately write a Wolfram Language program that, for example, gave statistics on the different kinds of animals, or planes, or devices, or whatever, that appear in the photographs.”

Wolfram has a lengthy, interesting read on the backstory of the project and more about how everything works behind the scenes.

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Comments

  1. gjconstructs - 10 years ago

    got 1 out of ten right

  2. pecospeet - 10 years ago

    Interesting. I was expecting it to be a little more accurate than naming something an aquatic bird (it was a Canada Goose) or calling Tower Bridge in London simply a bridge (but the first time I tried, it called it a building). Presumably it will learn as people provide more information.

  3. Julian Ngu (@julianjb) - 10 years ago

    I attached a photo of Westlake, China Apple Store and it says “miniskirt”. Then I attached another photo of river, it says “wild boar”

    • pecospeet - 10 years ago

      I attached three pictures of a mini skirt (image from belly to thighs) and got “skirt” and “bloomers” and “knee high”.

      It did manage to get cat and dog for me!

  4. guenevere14 - 10 years ago

    It does a great job with wildlife. Will be cool to see it’s progress as it adjusts to user feedback.

  5. sarasvvati - 10 years ago

    Awesome! Soon you can attach your own picture and see what will it say. LOL. Sounds fun.

  6. Moises Soto - 10 years ago

    Well, I was really disappointed. I’ve tested a handful of tools for image identification and this is by far the worst. In my humble opinion the best I’ve seen is an app called CamFind, they have a very accurate algorithm.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.


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