AI reveals global clothing preferences by data-mining Instagram photos

For example, the algorithm learned to recognize whether people were wearing a jacket, a scarf, a necktie, glasses, a hat, and so on. The clustering algorithm found some 400 different visual themes, such as people wearing white T-shirts and glasses, or wearing red V-neck tops or black dresses, or not wearing tops at all! They also found a sudden increase in popularity of yellow shirts in Colombia and Brazil during the June/July 2014 football World Cup--both countries' football teams wear yellow. As Matzen and co conclude: "The combination of big data, machine learning, computer vision, and automated analysis algorithms would make for a very powerful analysis tool more broadly in visual discovery of fashion and many other areas."