Google Photos Can Now Recognize Pets, Much Better For Sorting

Tech companies have been able to recognize humans faces for years but now, Google just revealed that it can now recognize pets. Through Google Photos, pictures of pets can automatically be tagged as either dog or cat and organized accordingly. It’s the perfect feature for pet lovers who like to show off pictures of their furry friends.

Organizing pet photos on Google Photos has been something of a slog for pet owners, largely because they would have to go through them one by one and tag each one. Now, Photos simply groups the pictures together, The Verge reports.

The new feature is being rolled out to most countries today and works simply be uploading the photos. Once they are up, the Google service sorts them accordingly so that pet owners can label them as they please. The new updates even allow searches for breeds, which should be incredibly useful for those who are running a puppy kennel business.

Of course, it’s only to be expected that there are going to be a few kinks to the system. For example, it seems that the feature is unable to differentiate different pets of the same breed. A Google spokesperson admitted as much to BuzzFeed, while also promising that new improvements are underway.

"This is just the start,” the spokesperson said. “If you have a number of pets that are the same breed (such as a few yellow Labs), you might need to help the app by removing photos of a misgrouped pet, so the app can tell Lassie from Fido."

Even though there might still be problems, the fact that pets can now be recognized via machine intelligence is proof of how far the technology has come. Considering the exponential improvements in these types of situations, it will only be a matter of time before tech firms can group pets based on their individual traits.