Pinterest doubles down on AI because 'most of Pinterest hasn’t been built yet'
When you think of artificial inteligence, Pinterest is likely not the first tech giant that comes to mind.
The company is hoping that will soon change. Pinterest is launching a new group within its organization dedicated to machine learning and AI research. Pinterest Labs, which will be run by the company's chief scientist, Jure Leskovec.
"Labs brings together top researchers, scientists, and engineers to work on image recognition, user modeling, recommender systems, and big data analytics," Leskovec writes in a post on Pinterest's blog.
By taking on these topics, which he describes as some of the "the most challenging problems in machine learning and artificial intelligence," Leskovec says Pinterest will be better able to grow the company's visual search and other features that use artificial intelligence technology. "Most of Pinterest hasn’t been built yet," the scientist teases.
The exact makeup of the new group isn't yet clear. Leskovec, along with a small group of engineers from other teams, will lead the effort. The group will also tap engineers from elsewhere in the organization to contribute to research, work with university partners and speak at conferences and other industry events.
AI has become increasingly important to the 7-year-old company
Though most of the engineers involved with Labs will stay on their existing teams within the company, Pinterest is looking to hire a full-time researcher to work on Labs exclusively, the company says.
The goal of all this, of course, is to help Pinterest use machine learning and artificial intelligence to make its products better -- and fast. The company has been steadily ramping up its efforts in the space and AI has become increasingly important to the 7-year-old company.
Pinterest's visual search and discovery features have been of particular importance for the service. A new feature called "Lens", for example, allows users to search the site by snapping photos of objects with their smartphone. Similarly, a feature called "shop the look" will surface similar items when you click on objects within an individual pin.
Now we know those features are just the beginning.
Topics Artificial Intelligence Pinterest
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
