How is artificial intelligence used in social consumer apps?

Artificial intelligence refers to “a broad set of methods, algorithms and technologies that make software ‘smart’ in a way that may seem human-like to an outside observer” (Lynne Parker, director of the division of Information and Intelligent Systems for the National Science Foundation).

The buzzword Artificial Intelligence is actually an umbrella for many other concepts and terms such as machine intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, or cognitive computing.

The potential applications of artificial intelligence interest me a lot when it comes to social apps may they be social networks, messaging apps, dating apps…

We often consider these apps not as real technological challenge and don’t necessarily measure how important the performance and quality of content of the product is key to a good social interaction that will retain a user for as long as possible.

Snapchat filters use visual recognition to be able to place the filter in the most accurate way. Computer vision is also a large umbrella term that encompasses any piece of technology that can visually sense the world around you. Snapchat’s complex facial recognition software recognizes and models your face in 3D space so that their filters not only work two dimensionally but also in video. Facial recognition is just one branch of computer vision technology.

Facebook started incorporating facial recognition into their photo tagging features back in 2015 when your friends were automatically being identified and tagged in your pictures. Apple also started identifying individuals in your photographs to allow you to look for them easily in your albums. Google’s self-driving cars employ deep learning in order to spot pedestrians, a branch of machine learning that can essentially continue to learn on its own over time. Kohl’s is one of many online retailing companies utilizing mobile visual search by giving their customers the option to snap a photo through their app in order to find that exact product or similar ones in their database.

Facebook claimed that they would use artificial intelligence de spot extremist posts and fake news which have been a very hot topic during the past elections in the US. Pinterest released a feature of recognition of similar photos: when you open a Pin, you now have the option to look at all the photos which look approximatively similar. Instagram also just launched a new comment filter destined to identify easily all the insulting or illegal posts/comments.

Obviously this technology helps us to have the best and we gave not seen all the potential, most evolving and to the date consumer products

The Markets research firm estimated that by 2020, the AI market would grow from $420 million to $5.05 billion. As more companies discover the possibilities of machine learning, the features and usages that will form our everyday habits and commodities will evolve every day.