
Google’s ML Kit makes it easy to add AI smarts to iOS and Android apps - coloneltcb
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/googles-ml-kit-makes-it-easy-to-add-ai-smart-to-ios-and-android-apps/
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lalos
Can't stop thinking about the centralization going on here, even if you avoid
using Google apps now any app could be feeding back your information to
Google.

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bilbo0s
Too bad "Ingredients" labels like they have on food are impractical in the App
space. But maybe Apple could highlight key APIs and net connections that it
finds in use during app review. Something like, "WARNING: This app makes
silent, background connections to [Google, Facebook, etc etc]"

Like In App Purchase warnings, but for background net connections.

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spsful
I really like this idea, and while it seems like it would be a bit difficult
for Apple to implement and the common consumer to understand, it would still
further their goal of providing privacy to their users. Plus it would help
consumers decide what services they want to give their information and
analytics data to, which is pretty powerful.

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laser
This looks awesome. Though, I'm disappointed the face tracking has pretty
limited landmarks and no positional tracking, I'm sure they'll improve the
models in the future. [https://firebase.google.com/docs/ml-kit/face-detection-
conce...](https://firebase.google.com/docs/ml-kit/face-detection-concepts)

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sandGorgon
This landmark tracking on the mobile is new for tensorflow . The benchmark
here is dlib which does an implementation of One Millisecond Face Alignment
with an Ensemble of Regression Trees paper by Kazemi and Sullivan.

Anyone know comparison benchmarks?

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erk__
Google are good at choosing names...
[http://www.elsman.com/mlkit/](http://www.elsman.com/mlkit/)

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hooluupog
Google: ARCore MLkit Apple: ARKit CoreML

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Klathmon
Apple have been using (name)core and (name)kit for a lot longer.

As an aside, how do you escape a star character on HN without dropping to a
code block?

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zaksoup
nit: I think the apple naming convention has been (name)kit and core(name).

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saagarjha
Apple seems to use both, but they've been leaning towards Core* rather than
*Core recently. We have CoreAudio, CoreBluetooth, CoreFoundation,
CoreGraphics, CoreImage, CoreLocation, CoreText…but there's also WebCore,
JavaScriptCore, QuartzCore, and ImageCaptureCore.

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rahimnathwani
Why do they provide _another_ API for offline face detection, when Google Play
Services already comes with one?

It would be great if apps that use the existing offline face detection were
just switched to the better model, without needing to change any app code.

And, if the problem is that some devices can't run the new models, it would
better for that to be handled by the API provider, than by each app developer.

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thirduncle
Try again, please?

Almost by definition -- one does not simply "add smarts" (of any kind) to an
app.

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djtriptych
For whose definition of "easy"?

Can we axe the marketing-speak here? It's just released; developers get to
decide how easy it is, not Google PR / Techcrunch right?

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tyrankh
Would it be a better page if it added footnotes to all adjectives "* For some
definition of easy|some-adjective." :P

All joking aside, it's just a click bait title - that's how these things go.
Try it out yourself and blog about your experiences with it!

