Google is open-sourcing its new machine learning system behind Google Photos

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Napier Lopez

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Napier Lopez is a writer based in New York City. He's interested in all things tech, science, and photography related, and likes to yo-yo in (show all) Napier Lopez is a writer based in New York City. He's interested in all things tech, science, and photography related, and likes to yo-yo in his free time. Follow him on Twitter.

Machine learning – systems to make computers work more like human brains – are behind some of Google’s best new products, including Google Now, Smart Reply in Inbox, and the crazy-good search in Google Photos (most of the time anyway).

Now Google is revealing its newest machine learning system behind these technologies, and it’s called TensorFlow. Google says it’s ‘up to five times faster’ that its first-gen technology, so it’s been helping the company rapidly improve its products.

Google is also open-sourcing the product, stating it can have a much bigger impact outside of the company. Academics, engineers, and hobbyists can take advantage of the code directly instead of trying to create their own off of available research.

If you’re interested, you can sift through Google TensorFlow here, although at the time of writing the link was not yet live.

➤ TensorFlow: smarter machine learning, for everyone [Google Blog]