In the past, users manually zeroed in on specific items in a pin to find similar items from a photo. Users can tap a visual search icon on the screen and the application will display the list of items that are similar to the element inside the image.
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Pinterest a year ago dove into e-commerce with “pins” in mobile applications that let people buy items they see on bulletin boards.
We’ve partnered with 20,000 merchants-big and small-to bring over 10 million unique products to Pinterest.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence are coming to Pinterest, which this week announced new features aimed at encouraging its users to use the site for shopping. People visit the app to get inspired about what they want to buy or do.
‘Since an image can contain dozens of objects, we wanted to make it as simple as possible to start a discovery experience from any of them, ‘ Dmitry Kislyuk, software engineer at Pinterest, shared on the firm’s blog. These dots can then be clicked individually to find out further details of the product in question.
“Object detection in visual search also enables enable new features, like object-to-object matching”.
The new features, Yamartino said, more closely reflect the actual experience of shopping by allowing users to find things they like and mull them over in a virtual shopping cart before deciding to pull the trigger.
According to the company, the option for visual search will be rolled out today, however, this is not the only addition that it is looking to make.
The new addition of the shopping bag will now let users add items they see from multiple merchants and checkout when they’re ready – just like a majority of the shopping carts other retailers offer. But new automatic-object detection, which is rolling out first on iOS, will highlight objects detected from image uploads and existing pins. “For example, say you spot a coffee table you love either on Pinterest or at a friend’s house, soon you’ll be able to see how it would look in many different home settings”.
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Last year, Pinterest launched a tool that allowed users to buy items they found on Pinterest directly from their phones.
