wnorris510 (u/wnorris510)

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

mgraczyk · 9 months ago

The paywall says I get extra stuff from premium, including "unlimited photo, voice, and barcode logging", "unlimited AI nutritionist chat", "unlimited Personalized tips from your AI nutritionist".

It sounds like if I pay more, I get more access and can use the app more? So the original article was completely correct in characterizing the premium plan as $79.99

It says

> The app was free to download, no trial period necessary. There's a $79.99 per year premium plan, but it's intended to be a donation. The app caps free tier users at three photos per day, while all non-photo methods of logging are unlimited and free for everyone.

Which part of that is not correct?

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

Apple requires us to say you get more as part of premium. They have silly rules that tie our hands on stuff. You have access to everything as part of the free tier. Hopefully the recent court case from Riot will help make it easier for us to clarify this.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

sumeno · 9 months ago

You are still selling a product that says it can count calories when fundamentally it cannot. The fact that people believe you and pay you money for it doesn't change that fact. You are lying to people.

> SnapCalorie is the first app where you can take a picture of any meal and get an accurate calorie count and nutrition in seconds

This is from your website. It is pure fiction. You admit as much in your first post

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

We published in the top conference of computer vision a peer reviewed study of our accuracy. On average we are twice the accuracy of a professional nutritionist. The product is free to try. If you're not happy with the accuracy, don't pay! We have around half a million people each month coming to our app and a vast majority stick around and are happy with the results.

If there's something we missed on your food shoot me a DM, I'd love to dig in.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

shifto · 9 months ago

What is the added value of the app? Ive been using ChatGPT to track my calories for 6 months now and dropped 20kg because of it. This is mostly me just telling it everything that enters my mouth and adjust the output I deem wrong. This isn't super accurate but apparently enough to get an idea, and thus lose weight.

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

Our app uses LiDAR for portion and is a lot more accurate than ChatGPT, ChatGPT doesn't have access to LiDAR and is less accurate.

Our app is free to use the most accurate model, ChatGPT is paid for the most accurate model and has usage limits.

Our app plots your data on nice charts and has visuals specific to understanding your data over time visually (e.g. how has my sodium intake been changing day over day or what has my average weekly caloric intake been when deducting active calories from fitness trackers).

Our app integrates with Apple Health and soon will integrate with Android Fit so you can export your data to other apps, share with health professionals, etc.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

mgraczyk · 9 months ago

What do you mean by this?

> it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research

I just downloaded the app and I don't see any way to use the premium plan without paying 79.99 or 6.67/month. How do I choose not to donate?

Or do you mean it's a required donation? And if that's true, in what sense is the article wrong, given that it says exactly that?

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

You have access to all of the same features without upgrading to premium. Just click the "x" on the paywall.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

kevlened · 9 months ago

> The whole selling point of AI is that they're vastly better

Not to nitpick, but "better" isn't on a single axis. Taking a photo is a better experience than searching and keying in every component, even if the accuracy is identical.

AI tools don't even have to be "vastly" better. They could be, and often are, even worse on several axes, because they often trade quality for ease-of-use.

You may assign a lower weight to the ease-of-use axis (as engineers, we tend to), but then you're likely not the ideal customer for many of today's AI products.

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

^^ 100%. Accuracy, speed, weight loss efficacy. Improving on each of this is a different solution.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

JohnMakin · 9 months ago

This is the classic refrain product owners counter back with any time people present reasonable criticism of their AI app.

User: "This (AI product) doesn't work!"

Product Owner: "Well, humans are also bad at that."

That's not the promise of these apps in general! The whole selling point of AI is that they're vastly better - if my eyeball estimate is "pretty inaccurate" and by your own admission the app is "pretty inaccurate" then why the hell would I use your app??

From the very top of the page you linked:

> SnapCalorie is the first app where you can take a picture of any meal and get an accurate calorie count and nutrition in seconds

(emphasis mine)

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

I got into this space because I saw many family members struggling with weight and nutrition. One of the leading causes of death in the United States is Diabetes, largely caused by poor nutrition and lack of exercise.

I've spent the last 10 years of my life researching why this is and how I can help. What I've heard from countless users is that it takes to long to track what they're eating and learn how they can improve.

I've never tried to claim that the selling point of AI is that it's "vastly better", I've just tried to build tools to help people. The voice note feature in our app accompanied by a kitchen scale is the most accurate thing you can do to track nutrition and it actually is much faster than what existed on the market before we launched.

The photo logging feature is more accurate than what most users did before we launched and is by far the fastest way you can track, but yes, it has it's limitations, and unlike our competitors I won't pretend it's perfect. If you're eating out at dinner, and the alternative would be you didn't log the meal, it's a great option.

At the end of the day accuracy actually is not the most important thing if you really care about helping people. Education is what matters. People need to learn which foods and ingredients are the problematic ones and why. Our app accomplishes that better than any solution that existed on the market before we launched.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

jraines · 9 months ago

The benefit of AI as a feature in calorie counting apps is great. But you have to track stuff manually for a while to realize the benefit. Specifically: using AI for restaurant meals is a convenient starting point, from which you use your hard-won feel for weight & caloric density of things to tweak the first pass to something closer to the mark.

As of now I would not at all trust a fully AI calorie counting app

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

100%. You should not trust photo based calorie tracking and should only use it when there is no other realistic choice (e.g. eating out).

You especially should not trust an app that does not do any research on the accuracy of it's algorithm or claims to be "consistently accurate" as many of them do currently. The truth is these algorithms have the potential to be accurate when values are averaged out over the long term, but dish to dish they will have occasionally wildly inaccurate results.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

sumeno · 9 months ago

What about when people give up because you massively underestimate their calories? Or when people develop eating disorders because you massively overestimate their calories?

If the goal is to learn then accurate information is important, although I suppose it's harder to get a VC to fund.

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

We do a lot of research on preventing eating disorders. As the article mentions we did not suggest she lose weight down to being underweight like other apps did.

Our app has the fruit and veg counters ABOVE the calorie meter on the dashboard. The reason for this is that maximization mindset (e.g. maximizing fruits and veg) is way healthier than a minimization mindset (e.g. minimizing calories or carbs).

We actually even tried to fully remove calories from the app at some point but we had a vast majority of users churn and decided it would be healthier for people who want calorie tracking to stick with our app by having it present, but requiring them to scroll past the features that promote a healthier mindset to get there. Feedback from users has been amazing that they've slowly started focusing more on fruits and veg.

wnorris510 commented on I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected lifehacker.com/health/ai-... · Posted by u/gnabgib

jablongo · 9 months ago

Do you use the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone for your predictions?

wnorris510 · 9 months ago

We do! You can read about our original approach back at Google AI in our CVPR publication here:

https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2021/papers/Thames...

We've since come up with a much more accurate approach. That said we also try to do some advanced technique to figure out what people were trying to log and not what the amount of food in the photo was. So for example if take a bite out of a bagel, we'll try to say 1 bagel since it's unlikely you wanted to log a bagel less a bite.