Search for the Young in Heart and Mind
June 25, 2020
An expert in search at an outfit called Blue Fountain Media understands search and retrieval. The insights about matching a user query with relevant content almost caused me to weep. See and experience the impact of high quality information yourself by navigating to “Using AI-Powered Visual Search to Enhance CX.” Note: I had to click past warnings about possible malware, complete two captchas about vehicles, and put up with a weird mobile oriented output in order to access this magnificent research paper.
Was the effort worth the intellectual reward? Sure, like a Twinkie for a starving college student addled by a long weekend of social distancing in Florida.
The main point of the write up is:
The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” takes on all new relevance when we consider the next big feature coming over the ecommerce horizon: AI-powered visual search.
That’s insightful. Like TV, right?
The write up states that AI has some other benefits:
- The missing agent has been artificial intelligence which has become increasingly more adept at image recognition.
- Beyond image recognition, AI makes it possible to learn a person’s taste and style preferences.
And there’s a stunning revelation about “most shoppers”. Sure, this is a generalization, but what search expert wants to deal with verifiable data:
Let’s face it, most shoppers know what they want – when they see it – but find themselves completely dumbfounded when it comes to describing what they’re after using the traditional text-driven search engine.
What about a student wanting a copy of Jacques Ellul’s Technological Bluff. Would a visual search be feasible on a mobile device while social distancing on a Zoom video call?
Of course, of course.
Plus, the search expert reveals some next steps. How does this match up with the wonks trying to improve the precision and recall for stress analysis engineers dealing with the failure of an emergency core cooling system valve?
The key, of course, is to mark up these images appropriately. Ironically, yes, this will still include keywords. But if you follow Googles [sic] best practices for images, you’ll find values such as placement and metadata are increasingly more important than simple text descriptors.
A diagram is okay, but the issue is calculating engineering stresses with a dash of math amongst the photos.
Amazing what one learns about search and retrieval when one consults true experts. And those engineers struggling with the analytic job. Check out Google images. It’s a best practice, particularly when the valve is part of the reactor on a nuclear submarine. There’s nothing quite like Google metadata. Are search engine optimization professionals who are also search experts up to task. Sure.
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2020
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