Amazon Lens allows you to take photos of objects in your space and search for similar products. If you have an iPhone, for example, you may notice that you can search simple terms like “dog” or “food” in your photos and access images that include those things with modest accuracy (when I search “dog” in my photos, I get twenty-one pictures of cats and one shoe). In fact, even when it seems like you’re getting search results based on an image’s content, you’re actually getting results based on the text associated with the image, what librarians call “metadata.” If the metadata for an image is limited because there’s very little text associated with an image its digital record, or if the descriptions are subjective or inaccurate, it can make this task even more difficult.ĪI-based visual search tools are already beginning to change this. It’s difficult for search engines to understand the context, meaning, and objects within an image solely based on pixel information. This semantic gap, or the disparity between an image’s digital and human interpretation of image content, tends to limit accuracy and success of these searches. While the brain is technically millions of times slower at performing basic computational steps than a computer, Liqun Luo at Stanford University reminds us that “humans triumph over computers in numerous real-world tasks-ranging from identifying a bicycle or a particular pedestrian on a crowded city street to reaching for a cup of tea and moving it smoothly to one’s lips-let alone conceptualization and creativity.” The power of the average human brain, at least at the moment, far outstrips the ability of any computer-based technology. We can even imagine what an image might look like without knowing whether it even exists. Humans can identify thousands of intertwined visual components of an image that aren’t easily described by search terms.
It can be difficult to translate what we want to see in an image into words. How do you use a search engine to find images? What keywords will you use to improve your search results?
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