Google Lens began a general rollout less than a month ago and at the time I said it felt futuristic and had a huge amount of potential. Indeed, looking back on 2017, I thing that Lens could be one of the most significant product releases by Google for the year – or will prove to be in the coming 12 months.
Google’s Rajan Patel, the lead engineer for Google Lens, took to Twitter yesterday and highlighted some of the areas in which we are going to see Lens improve and grow in the coming months.
Shopping (apparel, home goods, etc) in the works. Natural world (flora and fauna) improvements coming. Team just sent me an amazing new OCR model. Experimental AR experiences coming as well…
— Rajan Patel (@rajanpatel) December 9, 2017
Before readers get too excited, it should be noted that Mr. Patel gave no indication on when we will see these new features and functionalities within Lens. That said, it is exciting to read that Google is thinking about where to take the app & service next. Truly exciting stuff!
Imagine you are shopping and you use Lens to identify a toaster. You can easily see where Google would then tie Lens together with Google Express or open an API for you to be able to find that toaster on Amazon. They could even potentially tie it in with Google Maps to point out other stores near you where you can buy that toaster.
For me, living in the mountains of Colorado, the natural world concepts that are mentioned are equally as exciting. While I live in a ski village, that village is more-or-less in the forest so when Spring and Summer are here, there are wildflowers galore. I have several field guides to help me identify flowers but I’m not very good at it frankly as many look the same to me. If Google Lens could sort that out using Artificial Intelligence, personally it would be a big win.
All of this is exciting stuff for sure and it gives a good glimpse of what Google wants to do with Lens and it’s AI-driven potential.
