Did you ever upload a photo of a product you want to buy into an app to check what it costs in stores near you?
Or maybe you’ve noticed a driverless car miraculously stopping when a pedestrian is crossing the street?
In any case, you would probably agree that such things are pretty cool, right? 😊
Here’s where image recognition software comes into play.
Although there are many options available in the market, we want to present to you our favourite picks for businesses in 2024!
But first things first.
What Is Image Recognition Software?
How Does Image Recognition Software Work?
What Is the Best Image Recognition Software?
Final Thoughts About Image Recognition Software
What Is Image Recognition Software?
Image recognition software is a computer program that can identify an object, scenes, people, text, or even activities in images and videos. This is possible due to deep learning algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI).
Sounds complicated? Don’t worry.
Check out our image recognition overview to learn more about important terminology, machine learning, computer vision, and deep learning in plain English. Give it a read!
💡 Tip: If you want to find out more about artificial intelligence, read our thoughts on Social Media Bots, AI in Marketing and Media Impact Analysis.
How Does Image Recognition Software Work?
Generally, image recognition software works in four steps:
- Extracting pixel features from an image
- Preparing labeled images to train the model
- Training the model so it can learn to recognize images
- Recognizing new images
In simpler words:
For a self-driving car to know what a stop sign looks like, it must be presented with an image of one. The machine will study it through a variety of algorithms and analyze what stop signs should look like by scanning the image section-per-section.
Once the image is completely read, it can be appropriately labelled and categorized. The more images of stop signs the machine can read in different conditions or angles, the better the chances it doesn’t confuse it with other things, like a dog for example. 😊
💡 Tip: Learn more about how Meltwater uses AI.
What Is the Best Image Recognition Software?
We want you to find the best image recognition tool for your business needs! Therefore, we’ve prepared an overview of our top picks for 2024:
1. Meltwater Image Search: A Game-Changer in Social Media Monitoring
2. Google Reverse Image Search: No Words Needed
3. Clarifai: Data, Data, Data
4. Imagga: Organize Away
5. Amazon Rekognition: Make a Move
6. WhatFontIs: Upload a Font & Let AI Do the Work
7. Anyline: Scanning on the Go
8. Aquaforest: From TIFF to PDF files
1. Meltwater Image Search: A Game-Changer in Social Media Monitoring
Are you looking for a simple and highly intuitive social media monitoring software with the ability to search the context of an image, rather than only text?
Do you want to spot new consumer trends in real-time and get all the insights you need with the help of artificial intelligence?
We’re very proud to introduce the brand new Meltwater Image Search feature (aka. company search and visual listening) based on state-of-the-art computer vision models created by .
Use our image recognition software to:
- ✓ Access data about your brand in non-verbal and non-textual content posted on news, blogs, and Reddit.
- ✓ Leverage visual AI-based demographic models including gender detection, age groups, and people density.
- ✓ Monitor which celebrities you are associated with.
- ✓ Use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and logo detection to find mentions of your brand in visual assets (e.g. in signs and t-shirts).
- ✓ Detect scenes, objects, or even visual emotion.
- ✓ Find out if your brand is used in trending memes and take action.
Using an AI algorithm, our platform can also identify “not safe for work” (explicit) content, which will give you extra peace of mind as you will be able to filter visually inappropriate images.
Are you ready to rise above your competitors and start creating more targeted and highly-effective marketing campaigns? below and get your free demo today!
2. Google Reverse Image Search: No Words Needed
With Google Images (or Reverse Image Search) you can find more information about images or objects around you.
For example, you upload a photo of a cat into the search engine and get results such as:
- objects in the image
- similar images
- websites with this exact image or similar images
3. Clarifai: Data, Data, Data
The AI-powered computer vision software Clarifai enables you to process images, videos, texts, and audio files, filter out unwanted content, recommend relevant products to your customers, or manage your unstructured data.
And the best thing…you can customize your AI models for any use case.
💡 Tip: Explore some of our data analytics resources: Reporting Guide, Market Intelligence, Business Intelligence (BI), Data-Driven Marketing Campaigns, Master Data Management
4. Imagga: Organize Away
Imagga's image recognition tool is great for sorting, organizing, and displaying images based on criteria like tags or categories.
Thanks to a powerful API, you can
- empower product discoverability in your application,
- unlock facial recognition or
- automatically generate cool thumbnails.
💡 Tip: Automations are used by many companies to increase productivity and simplify work processes. Our comprehensive Guide to Marketing Automation will give you a better idea on how it’s done.
5. Amazon Rekognition: Make a Move
The user-friendly Amazon image recognition software provides insights on still images as well as videos.
Some of its features include
- activity recognition (e.g. playing soccer or delivering a package)
- face analysis (e.g. smile, open eyes, glasses)
- unsafe and inappropriate content moderation
- text detection (e.g. street names, image captions, license plate numbers)
6. WhatFontIs: Upload a Font & Let AI Do the Work
WhatFontIs is, as the name already suggests, an AI-based font finder and a great online image recognition software for graphic designers, bloggers, photographers, or just for anyone who wants to know the name of this freaky font they saw on a website.
The tool is very easy to use:
- Upload an image of your desired font or enter the image URL.
- Wait for artificial intelligence to work its magic.
- Get the result!
When the result is delivered, two possible scenarios could occur. Scenario A: The AI has found the exact font you were looking for–WOOHOO! Scenario B: If it doesn't identify the right match, it suggests over 60 alternatives you can go through and choose the one that most resembles your font.
7. Anyline: Scanning on the Go
Anyline is an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that can be integrated into any camera-enabled mobile device and is a good choice if you’re looking for a practical scanner to make your daily tasks easier.
It's popular due to its versatile use in different industries, for example in:
- Energy & Utility: The Anyline OCR software is ideal to scan utility meter values, serial numbers, and bar codes.
- Retail: Using their phone camera, customers can scan items and get specifications about them.
- Logistics: Delivery companies can securely capture various types of barcodes on packages as well as ID data.
8. Aquaforest: From TIFF to PDF files
Are you working in a position where you’re often required to convert a large number of documents?
We’ve stumbled across Aquaforest, an OCR software that recognizes text from source TIFF and image-only PDF files and creates searchable PDF files.
It processes thousands of pages per hour as well as sets security, metadata, and default open attributes of the generated PDF files.
Final Thoughts About Image Recognition Software
To wrap it up…
Image recognition tools have become an important part of our lives, and one thing’s for sure, they’re here to stay.
Whether you want to use them to gain a deeper understanding of the wants and needs of your customers, to get informed in real-time when your company appears in a context that could result in a damaged brand reputation, or to create targeted marketing campaigns–we’d love to talk to you about it!
Fill out the form below to reach out and discover the many benefits of the Meltwater image recognition feature for your social media monitoring.
