(ThyBlackMan.com) In 2017, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai introduced Google Lens, a project that focuses heavily on visual-recognition technology. In simple terms, you use your smartphone’s camera and Google Lens brings you the information about the objects you point at. For example, there’s a business card on your desk and you want to save the contact information. With Google Lens, you can just open your smartphone’s camera, scan the card and the contact details will be saved to your phone automatically. The features of Lens are not just limited to reading business cards, you can use Google Lens to get information about objects appearing in your photographs. It can be anything from a monument to a restaurant, flower to food items on your plate.
Almost a decade ago, Google introduced an app called Google Goggles but the company entirely abandoned the project and introduced Google Lens last year. The app was accessible only on the Pixel devices, but now Google has integrated this feature into the Google Photos app so that all the compatible Android smartphones can run this app. Here’s how Google Lens is different from voice and text-based search.
Google’s text and voice search services are extremely helpful and none of them can replace each other. They go hand in hand and in the same way, Google Lens is expected to grow. It will not cut the need for text or voice-based search, but it can surely make your life a lot easier.
Let’s say you are traveling to someplace and want to know more about a historic building, some objects in nature or paintings, Google Lens can help you in similar situations when you have no idea what to type on a search engine or what to tell your virtual assistant to get information.
Sometimes, we have no other option than asking Google to help choose us the best restaurant nearby. But sometimes it becomes hard to judge using text or voice-based results. If you are using Google Lens, you can just click a picture of that particular restaurant, hotel or store and check reviews online.
When you visit a local market store, you hardly get time to type the product name on the Google search box to check price online. But Lens can work as a great shopping assistant. All you have to do is to just click images of products and let Google Lens bring relevant results about the product’s availability and price on different e-commerce websites.
Click pictures of what’s on your plate and Google Lens can tell you more details about the food item. It’s nutrition value and other details can be easily available on your smartphone. Typing on a phone while eating becomes too complicated and it is also not a healthy habit. But clicking a picture doesn’t require too much involvement of your fingers as these days, smartphones allow users to assign shortcuts for the camera app.
Typing a question into Google Assistant feels like you’re using Google Search in a different window. Adding visual recognition technology makes the whole experience a lot different and better. It is something that you can’t expect from normal web browsers and not even from Google Chrome. Google Lens connects artificial intelligence and physical world where it can be used as a search box and can also bring a lot more opportunities a normal text search box or a voice assistant can’t offer.
From recognizing animals to providing book, music album or movie reviews with the help of a cover picture, Google Lens can do so many things. You don’t need to translate pages on your web browser as the translation feature is available in the Google Lens itself. You can now read road signs you know nothing about, check those letters printed on a chocolate box or imported products.
Staff Writer; Corey Shaw
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