I searched through the internet but couldn't find a reliable article that answers this question.
Can we use Autoencoders for unsupervised CNN feature learning of unlabeled images like the below
and use the encoder part of the Auto-encoder for Transfer learning of few labeled images from the dataset? as shown below.
I believe this will reduce the labeling work and increase the accuracy of a model.
However, I have concerns like the more cost in computing, failing to learn all required features, etc..
Please let me know if any employed this method in large scale learning such as image-net.
PS: Pardon if it is Trivial or Vague as I am new to the field of AI and computer vision.