Fetch! iPhone App Can Name Dog Breeds From Pictures

If you or someone you know is really into dogs and you are always wondering what breed the cute animals you see at the park or on the web are, the Fetch! App from Microsoft will answer that question for you. Fetch is a new Microsoft Garage app that uses AI to name dog breeds from photos in the iPhone camera or photo library.

The app will identify and classify dogs by breeds and tell you what human personality fits best with the breed. The app even takes a page from those annoying Facebook quizzes and will tell you what kind of dog you and your friends might be. Fetch uses tech from Microsoft Project Oxford. Other apps and experiences that use Project Oxford tech include Howold.net, TwinsOrNot.net, MyMoustache.net, and Mimicker Alarm.

"There was an interest in creating a framework that would allow you to take a domain – in our case, dogs – and recognize numerous classes, such as breeds. We were interested in enabling an app to allow you to make object recognition extraordinary, fun and surprising," says Mitch Goldberg, a development director at Microsoft Research whose Cambridge, U.K based team built the experience. His team works at the intersection of user experience, machine learning, computer vision and more recently, intelligent cloud services. He's also had two German shepherd dogs, though now he has a cat. "We wanted to bring artificial intelligence to the canine world. We wanted to show that object recognition is something anyone could understand and interact with."

In use if the Fetch app can't determine the specific breed of the dog, it will show a percentage of the closest breed. A tap on that percentage will show the top five breeds that the dog could be. The app also has a list of breed information that will tell you breed disposition, size, coat, and families suited for each breed.

SOURCE: Microsoft