Earlier this year, Syte.ai, which develops visual search technology for fashion brands, raised $8 million from investors including top Asian tech firms NHN, Line Corp. and Naver. Now it’s unveiling a new API that makes adding visual search accessible to more e-commerce sites.
Called Visual Search for All, the white-label feature can be integrated into retail websites or apps within 24 hours and lets shoppers upload photos saved on their phones, like screenshots from Instagram, to find similar products for sale. It is based on the same technology as Syte.ai’s search tools for large fashion brands and publishers, which shows shoppers relevant items when they hover a cursor over part of an image (some of Syte.ai’s clients include Marks & Spencer and Kohl’s).
Syte.ai co-founder and chief marketing officer Lihi Pinto Fryman says once it indexes a brand’s product feed, Visual Search for All can be added to a site’s search bar in less than a day by adding a line of HTML. Clients pay a monthly license fee based on the number of image-matches likely to be used.
In comparison, other visual search tools can take weeks or months to implement and train to work with a brand’s product feed, says Fryman, and are often unaffordable for Syte.ai’s target customers, including smaller retailers that sell to millennials and teenagers.
Facebook Messenger and Line users can try out Syte.ai’s technology by sending images to its chat bot, Syte Inspire.