Last year Google introduced groundbreaking image recognition technology as part of their release of Google Photos. Deep neural networks could identify objects, people and places inside of photographs with astonishing accuracy, completely autonomously.

As fascinating as this technology is, I was certain that Google would keep it locked away inside their own products like Google Photos and Google Drive for the foreseeable future. I did not anticipate it being sold standalone as an API.

I was wrong. Two weeks ago, Google announced a beta version of their Cloud Vision API, allowing anyone to process images and identify things like everyday objects, faces (w/sentiment) and text or logos.

For example, processing the picture below with the Cloud Vision API that identifies common objects …