The Google Stack app can scan all documents for you — here's how it works

The Google Stack app can scan all documents for you — here's how it works

Google has announced an exciting new app called Stacks. It promises to bring order to chaos and create organizational solutions that have never existed before. At least, that's what it will do for your documents and receipts. Perhaps the rest of your life will be up to you.

The app is something that feels like it already exists in some form. You point your phone's camera at the document you want to scan, and snap away. But the app looks at what you've scanned and makes artificially intelligent decisions about what you show it.

The project originated with Socratic, which was acquired by Google. Initially used for educational purposes, founder Christopher Pedregal applied what he learned to the exciting world of receipts.

You take a picture of a document and the AI black box analyzes what it sees and tries to decide how to file it for you. If it notices a store's logo, it can put it in your receipt and see the date and time.

The AI will also look for due dates and total amounts due and help you find those documents again. For invoices that are due, the app can easily search for them. And yes, they were due three weeks ago, and yes, you will get a big fine if you miss the due date.

If you are worried that Google will lose interest in the app and shut it down, worry no more. Your documents will be stored on Google Drive, so you can refer to them at any time. The app may be gone, but your documents are safe and sound.

The Stack app is currently available in the Google Play Store. It is unknown if or when it will be expanded to other countries.

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