AI and OCR are used to scan and analyze all your online photos

Many companies are rolling out an increasingly wide range of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions poised to redefine the way the whole world work. Automation has been at the forefront of global companies for decades, and now it is the time for us to use it as consumers of online and offline software and even hardware.

   The concept behind AI is simple, in terms of the logic itself. Computer scientists have been tinkering with AI for more than half a century, and by utilizing a series of defined algorithms, AI-powered applications are able to draw from big data sources and with the use of deep machine learning functions to process data, perform high-volume tasks, recognize patterns and even make decisions.

   Google has already maybe the most powerful servers on the planet. The new search functionality in Google Photos is allowing you to find certain objects, locations, events, or even people within your photo files thanks to advanced AI. Utilizing the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tech found in Google Lens, you can now search for text from within Google Photos. Once it finds any images that contain that text, you’re able to use Lens to select and copy it in order to paste it elsewhere.

   As everything in the world, it has both positive and negative impact on our life. For instance, if you take a screenshot of a book and later you want to copy its content, then it is a very useful software trick. But, Google, as any other big company out there, may use your private data for their interest.

   No, they will not sell your personal data to any third-party traders, at least not in the way you think, but they use part of your photos to educate machine learning software on how to exploit AI to its own development. Companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Adobe are exploiting these powerful tools too.

   In terms of history, in the late 1920s and into the 1930s Emanuel Goldberg developed what he called a “Statistical Machine” for searching microfilm archives using an optical code recognition system. In 1931 he was granted with a USA Patent number for the invention, and the patent was acquired by IBM.