While Google Image, the leading search engine, can only gather and display results based on file names, the technology from Riya has the ability to extract information directly from the images themselves.
Munjah Shah, the CEO of Riya, stated that this limited trial service is equipped with face and character recognition technology aimed at providing more accurate and richer results.
However, users will need to download the tool from Riya’s website and run it on Windows computers. Once installed, the software will index all the images stored on the hard drive and upload them to Riya’s servers. “The more images you provide of a person, the more effectively the program works,” said Azhar Khan, co-founder of Riya.
Users of Riya’s free service can choose to upload photos in three modes: Private, Public, or Selectively Public, allowing access to certain individuals only.
Shah hopes that the company’s revenue will increase through advertising profits on the site. The recognition technology seems likely to attract the interest of various other services, such as social networking sites. Last year, tech experts predicted that Google was preparing to acquire Riya, but Shah declined to comment on the topic.
In the near future, the technology will enable image searching on the web; however, Shah cautioned that web images often have low quality and resolution, so the accuracy may not be very high.
