Friday can be a dog of a day, so we thought we'd share this AI development from Microsoft with you (writes Peter Coleman).

Most of us have friends and relatives that look just like their pet of choice; now the software giant has figured out how to relate that.

And who knows where it will stop.

A new iPhone app, appropriately called Fetch!, can identify and classify dogs by breeds, and claims to be able to tell you the kind of human who would go best with them. Even take an "informed guess" on what kind of dog you or your friends might be.

The app responds to 'bitza' and 'Heinz 57' mutts with a percentage rosette which tells you which five breeds could have made a contribution.

Microsoft has released the app through Garage in time for prime US and UK events, but the demonstration is more important for what it shows about the state of the artificial intelligence art. We've already had HowOld.net, TwinsOrNot.net, MyMoustache.net and Mimicker Alarm from Microsoft's Project Oxford, and are wondering where this can lead.

New machine learning technology sets the scene for all manner of interesting results: Microsoft Research development director Mitch Goldberg keeps a cat these days - though he did have a couple of german shepherds - so you can see where this is going.

And what's to stop with animals, when humans themselves, offer so rich a playground?

Already, Fetch! will volunteer its opinion in canine-related terms: A selfie could have you "resemble a doberman pinscher in one photo (sunglasses, no makeup) or a pekingese (no glasses, makeup) in another".

Social media is a key driver, and we shall await further developments to see what the world's newsmedia can do with it. Fetch's reading of the faces of some editors and publishers could be instructive, for example.