Working with major studios, TheTake launches AI image recognition engine for businesses

TheTake, a site which launched as a way for consumers to buy that thing they saw in that movie, is set to begin selling an automated version of its service directly to businesses. The New York-based company is pitching studios and entertainment sites on a machine learning system that can identify products and locations as a way to generate revenue from product placements and experiential travel based on set locations. The new product is based on a year's worth of work that TheTake's development did to train a proprietary machine learning algorithm to identify images using a different technique than the industry standard, according to TheTake's chief executive Ty Cooper. Initially, the team behind TheTake would manually enter all the datasets and use an off-the-shelf computer visualization tool to identify images that fit the pre-defined parameters set by the company's staff. Companies like Universal Pictures, Comcast, Bravo, E!, Fandango, Sony Pictures and the Hallmark Channel, are testing out the AI-based service now, according to an email from Cooper.