What is Image Annotation? — An Intro to 5 Image Annotation Services

Morrisnandy
Nov 6 · 2 min read

Image annotation is one of the most important tasks in computer vision. With numerous applications, computer vision essentially strives to give a machine eyes — the ability to see and interpret the world. At times, machine learning projects seem to unlock futuristic technology we never thought possible. AI-powered applications like augmented reality, automatic speech recognition, and neural machine translation have the potential to change lives and businesses around the world. Likewise, the technologies that computer vision can give us (autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, unmanned drones) are extraordinary.

However, none of these amazing computer vision technologies would be possible without image annotation. This article will explain what image annotation is and five image annotation services provided by numerous training data companies around the world.

Most image annotation projects begin with sourcing and training annotators to perform the annotation tasks. AI is a very specialized field, but AI training data annotation doesn’t always have to be. While you need higher education in machine learning to be able to create a self-driving car, you don’t need a master’s degree to draw boxes around cars in images (bounding box annotation). Thus, most annotators don’t have degrees in machine learning.

However, these annotators should be thoroughly trained on the specifications and guidelines of each annotation project, as every company will have different requirements. Once the annotators are trained on how to annotate the data, they will get to work annotating hundreds or thousands of images on a platform dedicated to image annotation. This platform is a software that should have all the necessary tools for the specific type of annotation being performed.

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