Google could soon make you think twice about snapping a photo of that decadent meal you're about to eat.
The search giant is reportedly developing algorithms that analyze an image of food and estimate how many calories it contains.
Google research scientist Kevin Murphy introduced the Im2Calories project during this week's Rework Deep Learning Summit in Boston. The service, Murphy told the crowd, is not meant to shame users about their calorie-laden diets, but to ease the stress of keeping a food diary, according to Popular Science.
Instead of looking up individual foods' calories and diligently tracking your intake, just snap a picture and Google's AI identifies what you're eating. It's still a work in progress, though. Im2Calories' may confuse your turkey sandwich for ham, or a clementine for an orange. A drop-down menu lets users correct mistakes.
"If it only works 30 percent of the time, it's enough that people will start using it, we'll collect data, and it'll get better over time," Murphy said, as reported by Popular Science.
Google did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. But a spokesman told CNET that the algorithms are still being researched, and there are "no actual product plans at this stage."
Im2Calories is designed for self-improvement over time, so the more images it processes and calories it discloses, the more accurate those numbers will become.
This marks another step for Google toward commercial artificial intelligence, following last year's $400 million acquisition of U.K.-based DeepMind.