You are what you eat. Eating is, in many ways, like learning. Being aware of what we consume and reflecting on what we should consume can significantly improve our health. However, deciding what to eat is not always straightforward, especially when we must consider our past eating habits alongside other factors. Eating is an art of balance, involving nutritional needs, personal preferences, and dietary restrictions. Can AI help us master this art of eating?

In this talk, Dr. Ngo will share research from Singapore Management University (SMU) on Food AI computing. FoodAI is an AI system that can recognize dish names, ingredients, and estimate calories directly from food images. It currently supports over a thousand local Singapore dishes and around 800 ingredients. The system has been applied in real-world settings for food logging and weight management. This is a general talk that introduces how AI can support food tracking and suggestion. No prior knowledge of AI is required.

About the Speaker

Prof. Chong-Wah Ngo is a Professor at the School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University (SMU). He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His primary research interests lie in multimedia computing and AI. He is actively engaged in lifestyle and wellness research from an AI perspective, with work spanning food and portion size recognition as well as AI in education. He has conducted extensive research in food computing, including ingredient recognition, open-vocabulary ingredient segmentation, food image generation from recipes, causality-based cross-domain food recognition, and cross-modal and cross-lingual retrieval of food images and recipes. He has also developed mobile applications for food logging. Currently, he leads the research and development of the FoodAI engine at SMU, an AI system designed to recognize local Singaporean dishes, which was deployed by the Health Promotion Board for citizen food logging.

About Artificial Flavourings: How AI is Changing Taste

Just like how chemical flavourings changed the way the world tasted food, Artificial Intelligence is evolving the way that people cook and consume food. In support of the Good Help Mart exhibition showcase, this programme series explores some of the ways that AI as a technology is changing our relationship to food as well as offering a taste of how AI can be used in our daily lives.

Can aI Help You?

Eat where? Travel where? Shop where? Good Help is no always hard to find! Discover quick answers and fresh ideas at your fingertips through our interactive showcases and programmes. For more info, visit https://go.gov.sg/canaihelpyou