Intel Geti and OpenVINO efforts advance AI and computer vision

Computer vision is among the most widely deployed use cases for AI today, enabling artificial intelligence (AI) systems to rapidly identify objects and people.

The global market for computer vision hardware and software service is forecast to reach $41 billion by 2030, according to Allied Market Research, and it’s a market that is attracting no shortage of vendor interest.

At the Intel Innovation 2022 event today, the chipmaker revealed details about its push into computer vision with its Intel Geti platform and OpenVINO toolkit software for AI deep learning and inference.

“Computer vision models utilize artificial intelligence to predict and extract valuable information from images and videos,” Adam Burns, VP and director of AI developer tools in the network and edge group (NEX) at Intel said during an Intel Innovation 2022 press briefing. 

Burns said the information that computer vision models can detect ranges from identifying a defect during a manufacturing process, to being able to determine how many people are in line at a restaurant. He added that computer vision is used to drive enterprise automation, productivity and innovation across many verticals and is increasing rapidly in demand.

Sonoma Creek now rebranded as Intel Geti

Intel has been working on developing its own computer vision platform under the codename Sonoma Creek. That effort is now coming to fruition under the rebranded name of Intel Geti.

Intel’s goal with Geti is to help accelerate adoption of computer vision, using Intel hardware and software. Geti provides a user interface that enables users to load and annotate data, and train and retrain models.

“Intel Geti is a computer vision AI platform that allows anyone in the enterprise the ability to rapidly develop AI models that improve business innovation and digital transformation,” Burns said. “We understand the value of AI and computer vision in the enterprise and we also understand the development barriers to adoption.”

Burns emphasized that Intel’s motivation with Geti was to make computer vision more approachable, enabling those who may not have an extensive AI or machine learning background to quickly and easily build high-quality models.

Early users of Geti include healthcare

While Intel is only publicly announcing Geti today, it already has more than 30 partners active in the technology’s early access program.

One such early access user is the Royal Brompton Hospital in the U.K., where clinicians are using Geti to help with their research of rare respiratory conditions. Without any AI expertise, Burns said that the team at Royal Brompton is able to train AI models just as they would a human member of the research team to analyze research data.

Having trained AI models helps to accelerate the process of processing images. “This solution can help to greatly improve early diagnosis and treatment options for patients with severe respiratory conditions like cystic fibrosis,” Burns said.

Another early use case, also out of the U.K., is with visual analytics vendor Sensing Feeling, which is building a solution with Intel Geti to monitor edge-based analytics and improve construction worker safety. 

“Through the computer vision model created by Intel Geti, their solution can sense when heavy equipment or machinery comes within unsafe proximity to either other equipment or personnel,” Burns said.

Crack open the Vino for Intel Geti

Geti isn’t the first time Intel has had an initiative for helping build computer vision models. Back in 2018, Intel announced its OpenVINO toolkit designed to help build computer vision models for the edge.

Burns said that OpenVINO and Geti are actually complementary technologies that serve different AI modeling needs.

“Enterprise users can upload images and rapidly build computer vision models with Intel Geti and then deploy those models using OpenVINO at scale running on Intel hardware,” Burns said. “Intel Geti can output an optimized and ready-to-deploy OpenVINO model with a push of a button, saving additional optimization steps.”

At Intel Innovation 2022, the company also announced the release of OpenVINO 2022.2, which adds support for Intel GPU Flex Series data center processors that were launched at the end of August. The updated OpenVINO release also adds a new automated optimization feature that will discover all the compute and GPUs that are available in a system.

“With OpenVINO and now Intel Geti, we’ve continued to try and make AI attainable for decision-makers and for developers within the enterprise,” Burns said. “Together, these two products enable the rapid development and deployment of computer vision models.”