Google to soon offer AI tool for skin analysis

San Francisco, 5/24/2021

Google announced late last week a new AI tool that will allow people to get information about their skin. The web tool, set to launch as a pilot later this year, uses AI to help users identify (but not diagnose) skin, hair and nail conditions.

Google Health researchers first described the technology, a deep-learning system for skin conditions, in a paper published last spring in the journal Nature ( a paper ). The „Dermatology Assistant“ tool asks users to take three well-lit photos of a condition. It then compares them to those on a list of nearly 300 possible diseases.

The model has been trained on millions of images of skin problems, healthy skin and clinical photos. It can take into account a user’s gender, race, age and skin type. In a test of 1,000 images of different patients, it listed the correct condition among the top three answers 84% of the time.

Background: Google receives about 10 billion queries about skin diseases each year. Together with researchers at Stanford University, Google Health is now testing its effectiveness in healthcare.