Facebook’s image recognition AI is an impressive on-platform image search tool that made it’s mark in the visual search technology scene.
This technology benefits eCommerce companies by presenting them with the opportunity to reach out to users that frequently share their product images, or images that are related. In the long run, it helps businesses establish a connection with prospective customers, and potentially convert them into brand ambassadors.
In February 2017, Facebook announced that their image recognition AI was now able to more actions and objects within photos, all in their on-platform search function. This meant that by searching for events or places in Facebook, you will be presented with the relevant images, even if the images weren’t originally tagged with the information.
Their Unicorn indexing system made it possible to provide more contextually relevant results. This technology is actually so advanced, that Facebook ended up having to scale it back a bit, for the sake of protecting user privacy and maintain a degree of control over insights. This contained version of Unicorn provides image results based on relevant context, personal matches, and of course public posts.
How can you use Facebook’s Image Recognition AI? Well, let’s say you run a bakery. You can check all the public posts within cities/regions of your choice, and within a date range of your specification, that includes images of pastries. Upon scanning the results, you will gain an understanding of who’s posting the most, who’s getting lots of engagement, and areas worth focusing on. This will help identify influencers (and micro-influencers) if you’re looking into influencer marketing and give you an edge in the viral sharing game.