The notion of being able to search photos according to the actual content of the photos may strike some people as a fantastical concept. Facebook’s AI however is committed to allowing you to search for photos based on what’s in them. This measure was initially created to help visually-impaired members of the Facebook community.
Quite naturally, a feature such as this one is too compelling to ignore on a larger scale. The computer vision platform known as Lumos is now powering this feature for use by the world at large. What this means is that you now have the ability to search for images on Facebook using keywords that describe things that might be found in these images. You are no longer limited to using tags and captions.
A Powerful New Search Feature
This feature represents a thrilling game-changer for the way people interact on Facebook. At the same time, you could also make the case that it will change the way people interact with image searches.
This feature represents a thrilling game-changer for the way people interact on Facebook. At the same time, you could also make the case that it will change the way people interact with image searches.
In order to accomplish its creation, Facebook set about the task of training their deep neural network on tens of millions of photographs. Since the social media giant is already hosting billions upon billions of captioned pictures, what the model works to do is match search descriptors to features taken from photographs with some degree of probability.
Once the terms have been matched to the images, the model will rank its output utilizing information from not only the searches, but from the original search as well. Additional weights prioritize diversity in the search results, ensuring that when you use this search feature, you aren’t just going to be stuck with fifty returns of the exact same picture.
Exploring Additional Feature Benefits
As time goes on, Facebook plans to incorporate this search feature into video results. Such a feature will obviously have some impressive commercial applications. At the same time, users will also be able to do things like search for the exact moment in the video that they want to see. For example, if you wanted to skip to the part of a wedding video in which the couple exchanges vows, the search feature would allow you to do this.
As time goes on, Facebook plans to incorporate this search feature into video results. Such a feature will obviously have some impressive commercial applications. At the same time, users will also be able to do things like search for the exact moment in the video that they want to see. For example, if you wanted to skip to the part of a wedding video in which the couple exchanges vows, the search feature would allow you to do this.
Facebook is also going to update its original Automatic Alternative Text tool. Designed to help the visually impaired, the tool brought a number of advantages to the table. At the same time, it also had problems with relating actions to objects. The update changes this to a significant degree.