Digital Innovation Digital Publishing
3 mins read

Picture Perfect: New AI Tool to Help Publishers Find the Right Pictures, from Getty Images

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Getty Images has launched a new artificial intelligence-powered research assistant, to help publishers find the best choice of images to accompany a news story.

Panels by Getty Images— an artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed in partnership with cloud-based image optimization platform Vizual.AI—uses customisable filters and a self-improving algorithm that enables a new search experience, designed to help media customers find the content they need fast.

It “reads” a news article to source the best visual content for it, and also learns how an editor selects relevant pictures, enabling it to better optimize the results over time.

To develop Panels, Getty Images and Vizual.AI spent 6 months working with a group of 20 of the largest newsrooms. They developed a set of algorithms that can ascertain the meaning and relevancy of text, based on parameters such as word frequency, recency, or whether they are known people or places. This is then matched with caption data from Getty’s repository of more than 100 million photos to bring up the an array of image options.

In today’s digital world, publishers are under constant pressure to tell the latest story and compete for consumer attention,” said Andrew Hamilton, Getty Images Senior Vice President of Data and Insights. “At the same time, we know how important compelling imagery is to creating online engagement. Panels by Getty Images meets both of these challenges for our customers using the power of artificial intelligence.”

Panels by Getty Images­ draws on Getty Images’ extensive creative and editorial content, and by using the power of AI to automate steps in their research workflow, publishers can create stories more quickly, with matching visual content that can better drive user engagement.

“We know how important quality content is to publishers and we are excited to launch this new AI tool that allows media publishers to discover stunning visual content with the immediacy that the current landscape requires,” said Doug Boccia, CEO of Vizual.AI.

Here’s how Panels by Getty Images­ works:

As reported by the Huffington Post, only 20% of the global online audience retains what is written in an article, while the percentage shoots up to 80% with the incorporation of visual content.

“Publishers need ad revenue, and ad revenue is driven by the eyeballs,” said Andrew Hamilton. “From our perspective, the best way to drive those eyeballs is through compelling imagery, telling really good stories and getting user engagement.

And we’re leaving the editor to tell that story. We’re by no means picking the best image or saying, ‘this is the image you have to use.’”

According to Getty Images, as the world continues to embrace the power of imagery as a communication tool, as a world leader in visual communications, they are focused on employing emerging technology that makes it easier for content creators to find the visuals they need.

For example, earlier this year, Getty Images partnered with Cortex, an artificial intelligence platform for creatives that recommends the best Getty Images content for social media campaigns.

Additionally, Hamilton’s team is working to develop new AI models that can be delivered through Getty Images’ API and built into its products, including visual styles and authenticity scoring.

“It makes absolute sense to combine developing AI technology to save time and present editors with a curated set of picture options,” said Doug Wills, ESI Media Managing Editor.

With more than 300 million multimedia assets in their database, Getty Images is among the global leaders in online visual communication. Given their massive worldwide reach, Panels by Getty Images­ might go a long way in driving adoption of this new technology, simplifying the process of automated image search.

This is a promising new tool, and if it can deliver on boosting speed, efficiency and relevancy in high-pressure conditions like in the newsroom, it could very well change the way image-searching is perceived in the news world.

There is a caveat, though…

“When you think about a creative process of selecting an image to match the story, it’s a much harder problem to try to solve with computers,” concludes Hamilton. “So even with this tool, it’s the human picture editor that has the last word. It’s not something technology can do a good enough job on.”

For more information on AI- powered image search, visit Panels by Getty Images­ here.