There are a few technology companies investing and improving the image recognition and visual search arena – PAN is watching a few and I am sure our photo agency/library readers will have been contacted or are indeed trialing the service …if you are not ..you need to – One developer is CamFind a Los Angeles-based tech company founded in 2012 by Brad Folkens and Dominik Mazur. Their mission is ‘to deliver the most superior visual search solution to people around the world, and to become the global leader in image recognition and mobile visual search.’ CamFind has recently raised $4.8M in seed and bridge round funding and launched its public API, CloudSight. The visual search API is a search tool that analyzes photos, rather than text, and returns relevant Web information to the user. The API is designed to be accessible and easy for developers and companies to integrate with many other devices and platforms.
They say: ‘Imagine you are at the supermarket and want to cook something with parsley. You take a photo of the parsley with CamFind’s visual search technology and instantly get all the info you need off of the Web – including images, nutritional information, recipes, pricing, and more. Now with the API being publicly available, any app can integrate visual search technology. CamFind’s technology is already being utilized by over 750 companies, including international marketing agencies and app developers among many other different industries. The company is also currently working with the five of the top ten North American retailers and three of the five most popular cell phone manufacturers.
The technology is available for developers and companies alike. CamFind currently has 11 pending patents on its technology. The API is functional, accessible, and saves companies time and money by removing the need for them to build similar technology from scratch. A company can also add visual search to its app and create a more gratifying user experience for its customers.’
“We wanted to literally and figuratively give developers the gift of ‘sight,’ meaning we would provide the visual search technology,” says CamFind co-founder and CEO Dominik Mazur. “We also want developers to use their imaginations to create new and exciting possibilities for devices.”
Dominik wrote to me (after I dropped a note asking to be on the CamFind press release announcements) Hi Will, “I assume a lot of stock photo site owners read your industry news. It’s a perfect match because we developed the most accurate image recognition commercially available that can help them assign keywords/meta-data to their images making them searchable.”
• If you want to explore the next level of meta data in your image collection I can put you in touch with Dominik directly – email me [email protected] or contact them through the website – I am not on commission with them ..yet!
• Another image search ‘explorer’ I am watching is Cortexica – dropped them an email …nothing back yet but worth keeping up with their developments if you can.