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Microsoft has announced a new visual search feature for its Bing app that lets users snap a picture with their phone's camera and use it to search the web.

The new visual search function builds on the AI-powered intelligent search capabilities already used by Bing, and works pretty much like Google Lens: Users take a photo of something or upload one from their camera roll, and then the search engine identifies the object in question and offers additional information by providing links to explore.

bing-app-visual-search-800x557.jpg

The feature appears as an icon in the Bing app's search bar, and can be used to search for everything from landmarks to breeds of dog, but Microsoft is pushing it as a way to shop from photos for clothes and home furniture:
Let's say you see a friend's jacket you like, but don't know its brand or where to purchase. Upload a pic into the app's search box and Bing will return visually-similar jackets, prices, and details for where to purchase.

Visual Search is available today in the U.S. via the Bing app [Direct Link]. Microsoft says the feature will also roll out soon for Microsoft Edge on iOS as well as Bing.com, which remains a search engine option in Apple's latest version of Safari browser.

Article Link: Microsoft Updates Bing iOS App With AI-Powered Visual Search
 
LOL @ all these products/companies that use the words "AI-powered" :D It's nothing more than hype and bs driven by an algorithm that scans through a sith load of data. We're still in narrow-AI times which means that a program does nothing more nothing less than what's it's programmed to do.
 
LOL @ all these products/companies that use the words "AI-powered" :D It's nothing more than hype and bs driven by an algorithm that scans through a sith load of data. We're still in narrow-AI times which means that a program does nothing more nothing less than what's it's programmed to do.

Technically, if true AI existed, and was programmed to think independently, be as functional as our own brains, and do everything we could ever want... it would still by definition “do nothing more and nothing less than what it’s programmed to do.”

I used to have an app that would look at pictures and tell me what it was. Forgot about that. But it was rarely right.

Perhaps this Bing version might be more accurate. I have a few things around the property that I’d like to identify beyond generic terms.
 
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I remember when Bing launched, and some clever person somewhere realized that if you went to google and entered a long number of random digits, googles algorithm returned a selection of items based purely on the mathematics of that algorithm, and if you changed that random number to another number, you got different results. Enter the first number again, and you get the original results again. The funny thing was, if you went to Bing, and entered the same numbers as you just entered on google, Bing would give you back the same exact results for each random number. Whoops.
 
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