Seven Years Late, A.I. Image Search is Finally Here
Don’t fear A.I. — instead, let it help you locate and keyword your images
Discussion of A.I. is everywhere right now. Listening to the news, you get the sense that computers will soon dominate humans. For photographers, the A.I. discussions range from the terrifying — how generative A.I. will eliminate the need for actual photographers, or to the more benign — how you can use A.I. to swap skies or remove noise from images. But ever since 2016, A.I. search and keywording tools have been available to help photographers, not to replace them.
Imagine what it would be like to have an app that can easily organize your catalog, locate or categorize an image, or generate accurate keywords for you. Having worked on the first generation of these tools, I have been using them for years now. As to why these tools have not caught on, perhaps it was just not their time. Now that A.I. search and keywording have finally arrived, I thought it might be helpful to look back on how they were developed and brought to market years ago.
In 1993 Apple released the Newton, a tablet computer that could recognize handwriting, manage your calendar and connect to a computer network. Only a tiny cohort of techies loved the product, and in 1997 it was discontinued. In 2010 Apple launched…
