One of the things I’ve always wanted out of technology is the ability to point my phone at something or take a screenshot, and have it say, here’s what that..
One of the things I’ve always wanted from technology is the ability to point my phone at something or take a screenshot, and have it say, here’s what that thing is and here’s where you can buy it. Well, my lavish consumerist dream is starting to come true, and Grokstyle is one company working to make it so — in this case, automatically identifying furniture and home decor from just about any picture or angle.
The basic idea is this: you open an app or web interface, and upload or take a picture of, say, a chair or lamp you like. Any angle, any style. The Grokstyle service immediately returns the closest matches, either including the object itself or ones very like it.
That would of course be very handy for any interior decorator, but ordinary shoppers can make it work, too. See a cool lamp at Restoration Hardware but can’t see yourself spending $500 on it? Maybe CB2 has something similar — Grokstyle would have hooks into individual stores’ inventories so you could check that sort of thing, or sort by price range.
At heart it’s all about computer vision and machine learning, of course: figuring out what the picture is of, then the contours of the piece, the dimensions, colors, and so on, and matching that info to a library of millions the company has collected.
