There is a promise in this nation, and that promise is coming from the young people. Across states and industrial sectors, I am meeting young people doing amazing things in technology. They have visions and are clearly unbounded by our structural paralysis, doing their things, to rise with the rest of their peers around the globe.
Meet Vtion.ai, a Nigerian startup that develops AI powered visual search technology for fashion brands, art, ecommerce platforms and offline retailers. This young company is making visual search accessible to e-commerce sites across Africa. They have done, for African fashion, what big ICT utilities like Google and Microsoft are doing for largely Western fashion.
Yes the Aso Oke, Babariga, “the Senator”, Uwe Agu and all those African traditions that make Africa tick can come into fusion with technology. Simply, fashion AI understands Aso Oke, and that is amazing.
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Their technology can be integrated with retail websites or mobile apps within 24 hours and lets shoppers upload photos saved on their mobile phones, screenshots from Instagram, to find similar products for sale. This is based on the same technology with which the team behind it was named as part of the winners of AWS AI Hackathon 2018.
For the competition, the team built a project that allowed users search for similar African attires with photos. They also added a feature where you could like and dislike pictures and the platform would display more outfits similar to what users liked and less of what was disliked. The project indexed thousands of images, 3,500 user in one month and about 17,000 likes and dislikes altogether.
Connecting with the team, Emmanuel Adigun, Vtion.ai co-founder and designer, notes that once it indexes a retailer’s product feed, Visual Search can be added to a site’s search bar via it’s JavaScript SDK in a single line of HTML. Customers pay a monthly access fee based on the number of product matches likely to be used. This does better when compared with other visual search tools which can take weeks or months to implement. They have elevated the level of competition by simplifying the process even as they make it easier for Africa digital retail ecosystems to have the technology to deepen the sector.
This is artificial intelligence in action. Vtion.ai’s visual search platform strives to ensure a seamless/plug-n-play model for its target customers, including smaller retailers that sell to millenials and teenagers. Emmanuel reiterates that the goal of Vtion.ai is to help every retailer leverage the power of visual search to drive customer engagement. With firms like vTion, our technological trajectory is very promising.
Vtion.ai recently integrated with a top bridal outfit in Nigeria, Hadassah Bridals. This allows soon-to-be brides to search for wedding gowns and accessories with photos of gowns they have seen before, and see results of similar gowns from Hadassah Bridals catalog.
Now, you can experience this technology which Emmanuel and his team have unveiled for the world. Visit vTion Demo and follow the instructions. The team is also working on a Telegram chat bot where users can also try out the technology by sending images to its chat bot, Vtion Sense.
Very brilliant young people, holding the banner for Nigeria and Africa, in this emerging AI era.
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