While everyone knows Amazon wants in our front door, now it looks like now the tech giant may also want to know what’s going on in the backyard.
That’s because the company was recently awarded a patent that could enable consumers to take pictures of their backyard garden and receive tailored recommendations on different types of items to buy or recipe recommendations generated by algorithms using image recognition software.
One such example outlined in the patent description is suggesting the consumer buy feta cheese and olive oil because the Amazon “garden service” has determined they have the ingredients to make a Greek salad.
From the patent:
“…Evelyn may use her smartphone to take and upload photos of her backyard to the garden service. In turn, the garden service may implement image recognition algorithms to analyze the photos, determine the vegetables growing in the backyard, and determine other objects in the backyard that may limit what new plants may be added. For example, the garden service may determine that tomatoes, cucumber, and mint may be growing in the north-end of the backyard. As such, the garden service may recommend a Greek salad recipe using these vegetables and may identify other ingredients such as feta cheese and olive oil for purchase from the electronic marketplace.”
The conceptual graphic below outlines how the patent would work:
The news of this patent is especially interesting in light of their recent integrations with recipe content creators to create what are essentially recipe-driven shopping experiences. I can envision a scenario where these two efforts are combined and Amazon’s “garden service” provides customized recommendations based not only on what the person is cooking, but also makes suggestions about how they could plant certain vegetables or other products to make certain meals in the future.
You can read the patent itself here.