Get your tassels ready. Just a few months after Snip Insights, a Microsoft Garage project, released at Microsoft Build 2018, the project becomes a Garage graduate and expands to new platforms as it joins AI Lab.
The first prototype of Snip Insights was designed and built by a team of Garage interns in response to a pitch by the Office of the CTO AI, Worldwide Commercial Business team. The sponsor challenged the interns to leverage Microsoft Azure’s Cognitive Services to revolutionize the way customers search. In 16 short weeks, the team was able to release their source code on GitHub just in time for Microsoft’s annual developer conference in May.
Taking The Prototype to the Next Level
Inspired by developer enthusiasm for the tool, Microsoft’s AI Lab partnered up with the sponsor to take Snip Insights to the next level. “We decided to explore how AI could further reimagine the image search experience,” said Tara Shankar Jana, Senior Product Marketing Manager of AI Lab. “Our teams refined the project with a new, more intuitive UX and enabled cross-platform availability on MacoS, Linux, and Windows. We’re also excited to make Snip Insights available for download so developers can experience how AI can be infused into an everyday tool.” The project is available on GitHub, with corresponding documentation available at AI Lab.
Empowering Developers to Innovate with Microsoft AI
AI Lab and the Office of the CTO AI, WCB are two Microsoft teams working to empower developers to innovate with AI. “Most of us, before we started the internship, we’d never really worked with AI before,” shares UX Design Intern Christie Chan. “We had access to all these awesome resources.” When asked about their experience using the Cognitive Services APIs to create a new project, Jeffrey Chang, a Software Developer Intern also on the project, shared, “I was surprised to find how easy it was to use Microsoft Cognitive Services.” AI Lab outlines a detailed breakdown of the technologies used to create this new-and-improved version of Snip Insights, illustrating how developers can use cloud services to extract intelligent insights from images. “We are really passionate about empowering developers to innovate with Microsoft AI,” continues Tara. “Snip Insights is not only a great showcase of how AI can reimagine an experience, but also how developers can do more with AI.”
Watch as Garage interns Christie Chan and Jeffrey Chang describe their Garage intern experience and what it was like to develop a project using Microsoft AI and Azure.
An Internship for Curious, Passionate Innovators
Each summer, a select group of Microsoft interns participate in a unique, startup style internship where interns team up in groups of 5-7 to design and build working prototypes in response to pitches by teams around Microsoft. Interns get to know their customers and create fresh experiences that tackle pain points or show the possibilities of new technology. As Christie shares, “The bottom line is: we’re not just trying to show off that we have all these cool technologies—we’re trying to improve people’s lives.” Garage interns have worked on a wide variety of projects, ranging from Seeing AI, a mobile app for the visually impaired featured on Product Hunt and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to Ink to Code, a UWP app that translates digital sketches into Visual Studio to accelerate the app development process. Snip Insights was built by a team of interns, based out of Microsoft’s Vancouver, BC Global Development Center.
The Garage internship attracts applicants who are passionate about innovation and not afraid of a challenge. If this sounds like you, you can learn more about the Garage Internship Program and apply at Microsoft Careers. We’re hiring.
