Shutterstock shows machine learning smarts with reverse image search for stock photos

Computer vision is essentially an arm of artificial intelligence that lets machines analyze and understand images by breaking them down and processing them on a pixel-by-pixel basis, rather than by meta data (such as keywords and descriptions that rely not only on human actions, but on human accuracy too). Predictive typing keyboard company SwiftKey was recently snapped up by Microsoft -- not because it has a popular little app for Androids and iPhones, but because it's building a sophisticated back end built on artificial intelligence and machine learning. This includes artificial neural networks (ANNs) that are more directly based on the structure and workings of the human brain. From enterprise software and drug discovery through to predictive typing and now stock photography searches, machine learning is less of an abstract research field now and more of a reality.