Pinterest To Launch Search Tools For Different Hair Patterns

Image sharing and social media service, Pinterest has announced on Wednesday that it will launch a search tool to help people narrow their hair inspiration search by hair pattern.

Pinterest explained that when users search for hairstyles, new filter options will appear under the search bar for coily, curly, wavy, and straight textures, as well as shaved / bald and protective styles.

The social media service said that the filters were created with Black, brown, and Latinx people in mind and this should be particularly useful for people of color looking for styles tailored to their hair textures.

An editorial hairstylist and global artistic director of the Amika hair care brand, Naeemah LaFond has adviced Pinterest during the feature’s development “Just the simple idea that I don’t have to work twice as hard to find a hairstyle because of my hair type is a game-changer.”

The new feature builds on Pinterest’s skin tone search filters, which were introduced in 2018. To make those filters, Pinterest engineers started with data from ModiFace’s AI library, adjusting the algorithm from there to improve things like its ability to properly categorize skin tones in low light. Pinterest has made improvements to its in-house tech since then, saying it’s now “three times as likely to detect multiple skin tone ranges in top search results, compared to previous technology.”

Pinterest said that to determine which hair types are shown in hairstyle pins, the hair pattern feature uses “computer vision-powered object detection,”

“We built hair pattern search with in-house AI on top of our foundational computer vision technology that is used in visual search and shopping,” says a Pinterest spokesperson. The company says its algorithm has detected hair patterns in over 500 million images on the platform.

Pinterest has assured that the Hair pattern search will be rolled out across desktop, iOS, and Android apps over the coming weeks.

The filters will be available in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand first, before expanding to other countries in the coming months.