Facebook's Image Recognition/Tagging System

April 3, 2017 1:38 pm

I've noticed recently that Facebook has been applying an automatic image recognition/tagging process to any pictures that are uploaded to their system.  The general idea is to get a computer to "understand" what's in a picture.

In Facebook's case, images are given a textual description automatically which is used to provide meta-data that can be accessed by screen-readers (used by the visually impaired when using computers).  This isn't about facial recognition (though Facebook is doing that as well).

For example, I came across this picture from a friend of mine:

Which Facebook's artificial intelligence system automatically tagged with this information:

Image may contain: sky, twilight, outdoor and nature

Automatic image tagging/recognition has been a popular field of research, but this is the first time I've seen it actually used in a production system for something useful.

It's pretty good too.  Here's one of interest to the Dickerson family at large:

Which Facebook automatically describes as:

Image may contain: 8 people, people smiling, people standing and indoor

I just found that interesting.  That's all.

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