Use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) are so many and varied that the meaning of the term itself can be hard to pinpoint. The Google Cloud Platform supports a host of products that make specific AI functions easy to apply to the problems they're designed to solve. Vision AI is a cloud-based application designed to make computer vision applicable in a wide variety of cases. But what is computer vision, exactly?
On December 8, 2021, C2C invited Eric Clark of foundational C2C partner and 2020 Google Cloud Partner of the Year SpringML to answer this question. Clark's presentation, a C2C Deep Dive, offered an enriching explication of the concept of computer vision, as well as projections for its impact on the future of AI. Most notably, Clark used Vision AI to present multiple demonstrations of computer vision in action.
To set the stage for these real-world applications, Clark offered a breakdown of the essential functions of computer vision:
Next, Clark used real footage of traffic at a busy intersection to demonstrate how computer vision monitors this footage for incidents and accidents to calculate travel times:
To showcase Vision AI's video intelligence capabilities, Clark uploaded a video and applied different tags to demonstrate how computer vision recognizes and identifies individual elements of different images.
Clark's final demonstration was an in-depth look at several infrastructure maintenance use cases, starting with a look at how computer vision can be used to detect potholes and other impediments to safe road conditions:
Clark's demonstrations made clear that Vision AI is as user-friendly as it is powerful, and Clark made sure at the end of his presentation to invite attendees to make a trial account on the Google Cloud Platform and try out the API themselves. Alfons Munoz ( @Alfons ), C2C's North American Community Manager, echoed his encouragement. "It's really easy to try it out," he said.
If you haven't already, set up an account on the Google Cloud Platform and try using Vision AI for help with a current project, or even just for fun. Write us back in the community to let us know how it goes!