Same Energy is a Visual Search Engine That Finds Similar Photos in a Snap

Same Energy is a new Web tool that’s perfect for photographers looking for visual inspiration. It’s an AI-powered visual search engine that provides a fast and simple experience for exploring visually similar photos.

The website was created by Canadian developer Jacob Jackson, who launched it into beta last week.

“We believe that image search should be visual, using only a minimum of words,” Jackson writes on the site. “And we believe it should integrate a rich visual understanding, capturing the artistic style and overall mood of an image, not just the objects in it. We hope Same Energy will help you discover new styles, and perhaps use them as inspiration.”

You can start by providing one or more keywords, uploading/dropping a photo, or by clicking one of the featured images on the homepage. Every time you click a photo in the grid on the screen, a new search is performed to identify visually similar photos, and the new results fill the screen within seconds.

Here are some examples of visually similar photographs:

Here’s what you get if you search for “street photography” and then click through on one of the results:

In addition to clicking any photo on the screen to perform a new search based on that photo, you can also right-click to view any photo at a larger size as well as bring up more info and options (name, source page, save, search, and hide).

Jackson says his search engine uses deep learning at its core and currently indexes 19 million images shared on Reddit, Instagram, and Pinterest.

It’s a search engine, so it relies on the same precedent as Google/Bing Images—you can right click on any image to see the original source

— Jacob Jackson (@Jacob__Jackson) February 4, 2021

“The principal advantage of our search is that it works without any tags or metadata: all we need is the image,” Jackson says. He’s considering selling API access to the visual search as a business model for Same Energy, but for now the project remains free to use, ad-free, and unmonetized.

Head on over to the Same Energy website if you’d like to give the new visual search engine a spin.

(via Jacob Jackson via Laughing Squid)