Microsoft's new web and iPhone app launched on February 11,Thursday uses artificial intelligence (AI) to guess a dog's breed based on an uploaded picture of a canine snapped with a digital camera. Fetch! can also use its machine learning to guess which of the breeds of man's best friend a human or cat most closely resembles, such as a Labrador, poodle, German shepherd, beagle, or bulldog.
This is the newest of a series of mobile apps developed by Microsoft Garage. During the past year its experimental projects have included smartphone apps that guess a person's age or twin status, or measure moustaches in photographs.
Like other Microsoft's AI apps the new application uses machine learning to make more accurate guesses as it processes more photos and data from users. However, it has already become fairly precise.
Fetch! also has a sense of humor. For example, when the photo of a human is uploaded the Microsoft app will draw dog ears on the person, according to Business Insider.
Classifying dog breeds can be tough for AI researchers. However, the number of organized datasets has increased during the past half-decade or so.
Mitch Goldberg is a development director at Microsoft Research in the United Kingdom. He explained there is a public interest in recognizing many classes such as dog breeds , and Microsoft met the demand by creating a fun and surprising application, according to The Verge.
The OS giant has been developing various AI apps to improve its AI program. In addition, the research can help to turn concepts into new inventions.
Last month Microsoft Research rolled out an Android alarm app that forces people to wake up and make funny faces at 6 a.m.
All of the mobile apps are part of Microsoft's Project Oxford experiments. In the future developers will be able to access the Washington-based company's machine learning data.
Microsoft's app seems to be limited to common canine breeds. The World Canine Organization recognizes around 330 dog breeds, but the number varies among different countries.
The American Kennel Club (AKC) announced in February 2015 that the most popular dog breed in the United States is the Labrador. It has held the title for 24 years in a row.
Here's a first look at the Fetch! app: