Image Recognition Technology Emerging

Pfreemanevans | September 13, 2007, 08:26 PM

Today, Yahoo! Shopping launched their shop by color feature. The tool makes use of image recognition technology to match the color of pixels in photos sent to Yahoo! Shopping by their retail partners to the 56 different color groupings they have outlined. Yahoo has applied this new software only to categories where color might be most relevant such as apparel. Some retailers have rudimentary sort by color features in their search tools, but not to this degree. And, since the ability to drill down on search results remains one of the most useful features to online shoppers, more robust attributes are a good thing. Yahoo’s tools isn’t perfect yet, a search for white women’s blouses showed a number of green and pink camisoles – most likely due to the color of the mannequin that dominates the skimpy piece of apparel and thus overweighs the color matching. Bugs not withstanding, this is a nice feature the builds on the image recognition developments that have recently arisen from companies such as Like.com.