MIXI, Inc. operates FamilyAlbum, a service that approximately 30 million registered users rely on to share photos and videos with the people closest to them. As of January 2026, families have shared more than 20 billion photos and videos through the service. They can rediscover a specific precious moment — a baby’s first swim, an unforgettable birthday, a candid smile — and relive the emotion behind the memory. But delivering that experience at scale can be challenging. Helping 30 million users find one specific moment among more than 20 billion photos and videos means understanding what each image actually shows, then returning the right memory in an instant, at a cost that stays sustainable as the library grows by millions of items every day.
To solve for this, MIXI built descriptive search. Families type everyday words such as “baby,” “smile,” or “birthday cake,” and descriptive search surfaces the matching photos and videos. Tag and…
