The latest Google Lens update makes the image recognition service much smarter. The app can now read menus and show additional information with journal articles. In addition, Lens gets a different, more user-friendly design.
Google Lens update is rolling out
Google Lens is an app that uses the camera of your smartphone to recognize objects, photos, and videos. With these details, Lens provides additional information, for example, which plant species you have photographed or at which web stores you can purchase those nice red shoes. More and more smartphones integrate Google Lens in the camera app, so you always have the tool with you. Meanwhile, Google is making the image recognition service smarter.
On Google I / O 2019, the company revealed that Lens would soon receive a major update. The app also gets a different design that should improve user-friendliness. That update will be rolled out from now on, write 9to5Google and others. The site received the latest Google Lens version after updating the Google beta app (version 9.91) on a Pixel smartphone. The update is not yet available for everyone. This is likely to happen in the coming days to weeks.
The lens helps with menus and receipts
The update integrates Lens into Google Maps, and that makes perfect sense. Maps have a wealth of information about restaurants, menus, and guest reviews. With Lens, you can now focus your camera on the menu, after which the app tells you what the most popular dishes are. Still in doubt? The lens can also serve you with photos and reviews of individual dishes. Read more about how the Google Lens checks menu cards.
Bring magazines to life
Google also thinks it can get more out of paper magazines. The company has therefore entered into a partnership with various major publishers. Articles in participating magazines are made suitable for Google Lens.
If you focus your camera on an article, you will see additional relevant information. On I / O 2019, Google showed a cooking magazine where Lens projects the precise recipe. No ingredient list, but a video from a chef who makes the dish.
With the example mentioned above, Lens also provides information about the precise ingredients and where you can buy them. With this form of augmented reality (AR), Google does, in fact, the same as the United States Layar, which already started in 2012 with AR for (including the United States) magazines. Google does not start the Lens integration with United States publishers for the time being.