Tag, you’re it! Shutterstock’s app now suggests keywords using AI

Media licensing company Shutterstock has announced a new feature in the latest update of its Shutterstock Contributor application.

Now, in addition to being able to upload images, sort through your photographs, and view your earnings, the app will use artificial intelligence to help curate keywords to use alongside the photos you upload.

For photographers, one of the most important — and monotonous — aspects of the stock photography workflow is coming up with a collection of keywords for each image. These keywords are used by the stock service’s search engine to help provide accurate and relevant photographs to buyers.

Most often, these keywords are thought up by the photographers uploading the content. The problem with this method though is that sometimes certain keywords can get overlooked or otherwise left out.

Shutterstock Contributor hopes to fix this by automatically generating a list of keywords to use with the help of computer vision technology. By scanning over the image, the app is able to determine the subject matter and suggest a collection of keywords that uploads can add to the image with a single tap.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen image recognition technology used in this capacity. But it’s one of the more interesting implementation considering the benefits it provides to both photographers and Shutterstock. Photographers now have one less step to worry about and Shutterstock has more consistent and quality tags for buyers to search through.

“This technology is rolling out on mobile first, where keyword suggestion means less reliance on a small keyboard” says Shutterstock in its press release on the new feature. No word yet on whether or not this feature will make it to other platforms.

If you want to take the app for a spin, head on over and download it from the iOS App Store.

Download for iOS