Dec 24, 2021 07:00:00

I tried using the web application 'Match It Fast' that can search for 'similar images' using the same search technology as Google

Google Search uses a very fast search algorithm, which allows you to select a suitable website as a search result from a myriad of web pages in a few milliseconds.

Google has released the technology 'Vertex Matching Engine ' used for such a high-speed search algorithm, and as a demo of Vertex Matching Engine, 'select similar images and articles from millions of images and news articles' on the web The app ' MatchIt Fast ' was released, so I actually tried using it.

MatchIt Fast
https://matchit.magellanic-clouds.com/

When you access MatchIt Fast, the following screen will be displayed. Click 'Start'.

Next, the selection screen for similar image search and similar news search is displayed, so this time I clicked 'Image Similarity Search' to try similar images.

With similar image search, you can search for images similar to the specified image from the 2 million images registered on

Wikimedia. It is possible to select the image to be specified from the prepared ones, but this time I decided to use the image I took by clicking 'upload an imae'.

When the image selection dialog is displayed, select the image you want to search.

This time, I selected the following 'Photo of a mountain bottle'.

Select a photo to see similar images. Click the circle on the screen to enlarge each image.

Some of the similar images look like heat-retaining bottles similar to mountain-only bottles ...

Some camcorders were completely different from the mountain bottles. It may have been judged to be 'similar' based on the coloring of the video camera and the shape of the part held by the hand.

Now, let's search for a similar image of

'Starbucks Toasted White Chocolate Mocha Photo'.

The search is completed in a few seconds.

In the search results, there are images that are close to the original image that seems to be a parfait or a float drink ...

Images that match the point of 'drink' but have different colors are displayed.

An image called 'house model' with a completely different color and type was also displayed.

Then click 'News Similarity Search' to try a similar news search.

In the similar news search, you can search for articles with similar contents from 2.7 million articles registered in

The GDELT Project by entering the text of the news article in the input field in the center of the screen.

At the time of writing the article, similar news search is only available in English.

This time, I entered the beginning of the article that reported the news 'I found a fossil of a dinosaur just before it was born from an egg' and clicked 'Query'.

Then, in a few seconds, dinosaur-related news was displayed in a row.

MatchIt Fast uses Vertex Matching Engine's high-speed search technology 'Vector Search' to achieve extremely high-speed search. Vector search is also used in YouTube and Google image search, and the following articles give an overview of vector search and Vertex Matching Engine.

Google's vector search technology for instant access to any data | Google Cloud Blog
https://cloud.google.com/blog/ja/topics/developers-practitioners/find-anything-blazingly-fast-googles-vector-search-technology