Intelligent visual search launched by Visii and Artimage

Visii Artimage visual search close-up 1 - Image courtesy of Artimage
Artimage press release  – 18 May, 2017.

A ground-breaking artificial intelligence (AI) visual search tool – the first within the UK arts space – has been launched by AI specialist Visii for digital image licensing platform Artimage.

Artimage showcases and licenses a growing repertoire of over 15,000 images of exceptional modern and contemporary art from nearly 150 renowned UK and international artists including Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Tracey Emin.

Disrupting keyword search, Visii’s intelligent visual search tool gives customers the power to discover artworks they’ll love based on their visual preferences. Through successive artwork selections, Visii returns visually personalised results, making browsing even large catalogues an easy, fast and highly engaging process. Customers can focus on a subject, an artwork’s composition or an artist’s style, without needing to describe it or know of its existence; meaning discovery of hidden gems now becomes possible and easy. Visii Artimage visual search close-up 1 - Image courtesy of Artimage

Visii uses advanced artificial intelligence methods to infer customers’ interests and generate visually relevant results. Its deep learning technology analyses thousands of visual descriptors within each image, the comparison of which is incredibly fast, returning results from large catalogues in less than 350 milliseconds.

For a service like Artimage within the picture library industry, this will completely transform the customer experience and how customers and picture researchers can explore the full collection and discover new images for their licensing needs.

Try Artimage’s visual search now

George Whitelaw, Chief Technology Officer at Visii said, “With the abundance of images online and often only highly structured ways to search them, we wanted to create a more natural and engaging method of discovery – making the focus of the process the images and how customers recognise them. We’ve worked with the Artimage team to build an intuitive experience that will allow both people who have a particular artwork in mind, and those that are looking for inspiration to find that perfect piece.

Victoria Hooper, Head of Artimage said, “It is important for us to develop an innovative service and stay on pace with new technology for how our customers will operate today and in the future. Visii’s intelligent visual search will greatly benefit artists by creating new ways to connect customers with their repertoire.