Area 120, Google's "in-house incubator", started one application document scanner called Stack. The application uses the technology Google's Document AI for scanning and categorizing documents. Stack is for now available to Android users in the US.
In a post at The Keyword, it is reported that the Area 120 team created the Stack application "applying DocAI's corporate technology to personal documents".
To scan a document with Stack, users just need to click on an image using the application and the algorithm will do the rest.
Automatically names the document as it suggests a category depending on the type of document. All this will provide a more organized way of storing documents.
While many document scanning apps already exist, Stack goes a step further by automatically detecting important information in the document. According to Google, this includes details such as “date maturity or total amount due”. This will allow for a much faster search.
In terms of security, Stack protects your documents using "Google's advanced security and login technology". Users will also be able to choose to have an extra level of security in the form of fingerprints and scanning person when unlocking the application.
Additionally, Stack will be able to synchronize any document with Google Drive. This means that users will not lose important documents even if they decide to uninstall the application.
The Stack app would not exist if Google had not acquired Socratic, a training startup, in 2018.
Christopher Pedregal, the founder of Socratic, is the head of the Stack development team. Regarding the idea behind the application, Pedregal states:
At Socratic, we've used Google's vision and language understanding to make learning easier for high school students. I wondered if we could apply the same technologies to facilitate the organization of documents.