With big industry players developing image recognition for bigger purposes, it becomes imperative to assess its impact on digital marketers.
“Image recognition is so important because it has the potential to be the paradigm shift away from the written word. We shifted from images on the walls of a cave to a written word because it was more efficient. Can we make images efficient again?” says Sastry Rachakonda, chief executive (CEO) of digital marketing agency iQuanti. Online retailers across the globe are working on making this more efficient. Amazon has already developed Firefly, a mobile app, that allows users to capture images and identify books, videos, music, email addresses, barcodes, QR codes, web addresses, and phone numbers. Alibaba has leveraged image recognition to allow users to pay for a product with the use of a selfie. Clothing store Neiman Marcus allows its users to “Snap. Find. Shop.” in order to make search easier.
Some companies have already begun using image recognition to help users with their search. Pinterest for example, allows its users to search for all things they do not have words to describe. Google’s Goggle helps users find information about pictures, barcodes or QR codes. This search capability is complementary to all of Google’s other businesses.
iQuanti’s CEO believes that with the use of machine learning image recognition will become extremely advanced and the next goal should be focused on the best way to commercialize this capability.
