Microsoft Invests in Deep Learning to Improve Image Search Results

Microsoft wants to make finding just the right image online less of a crapshoot by using deep learning to help its Bing Image Search engine return more relevant results to users. Deep learning is a computationally intensive subset of machine learning that enables advanced analytical workloads. Using neural networks modeled after the human brain, deep learning systems can better mimic how people recognize patterns and process information. Peeling back the curtain a bit on the search engine's internal workings, the Bing Image Search Relevance Team at Microsoft revealed that they are using deep learning to unlock information held between the pixels of the billions of pictures found online. Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) searches for correlations between images and search queries mapped to semantic spaces used to derive meaning from data, even if the web pages containing those images lack any sort of text descriptors.