VSCO App Update Adds New Discover Feature Powered By AI Called Ava

Photos app VSCO has received a new update and it includes a new feature that enhances photo exploration. VSCO is now rolling out a new Discover feature which is able to recommend collections of photos using an AI called Ava.

VSCO explained on its App Store page that photos in the Discover section are tailored to the user’s interests. Instead of basing recommendations on number of likes or votes, VSCO now recommends photos based on “moods.” These photos are curated by the machine learning AI called Ava with a little help from human curation.

According to Android Police, Ava actually tries to recognize what’s in an image. More importantly, these recommendations are based on what Ava thinks the user feels. This makes it possible for VSCO to make recommendations seem more visually appealing and follow a certain theme.

Although Ava is only being rolled out now, VSCO has been developing Ava for some time. Unlike the machine learning algorithms in the Google Photos app, Ava can not only identify objects in an image, it can also tell if a photo is able to convey a specific emotion.

“What we’re doing is forcing Ava to look at photography from a very different perspective. It’s not just about subject matter. It’s also about the artistic view of how we look at photos,” VSCO CTO Mike Wu told Fast Company last year. He also said that the human curators have “looked at these photos and identified everything from feeling to themes to quality to more abstract concepts. We’ve taken that and had Ava train against it.”

What’s great about this is that recommendations will always stay unique and will most likely appeal to a specific user. This also ensures that what users see in the Discover tab stays fresh and won’t be cluttered with similar looking images. This also makes it a great tool to find inspirations for photographers and further solidify the VSCO community as a whole.

“What really makes it unique is how we married it with four years of human curation data, and how it will continue to be powered and trained by our curation team here VSCO,” CEO of VSCO Joel Foly said. “So instead of just object recognition, we’re looking at it in the way that a human would be looking at a photo and trying to understand the quality and subtlety of it–not literally based exactly on what’s in the photo, but what you also might be inspired by if you’re inspired by that image.”

The new Discover section powered by the Ava AI is now available on the iOS version of VSCO, but there’s no word yet on when it will arrive on Android. However, Ubergizmo believes it may become available on the Android version of VSCO soon.