CVPR: Understanding images means understanding the world

Senior principal scientist Aleix M. Martinez on why computer vision research has only begun to scratch the surface.

Aleix M. Martinez, a senior principal scientist with Amazon’s retail division, first attended the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) — the premier conference in the field of computer vision — in the late 1990s, when he was a graduate student. “Golly, I've been in almost all of them since then,” he says.

In that span, he’s served multiple times as an area chair, and in 2014, he was one of the conference organizers, when the conference came to Columbus, Ohio, home of the Ohio State University, where Martinez maintains a faculty appointment.

Aleix.png
Aleix M. Martinez, a senior principal scientist with Amazon’s retail division.

He’s also seen deep learning revolutionize computer vision, to the point that many of the problems that defined the field when he first attended the conference have virtually been solved. But, Martinez says, they’ve been succeeded by problems that are even richer and more complex.

“As a professor, I did a lot of work in computer vision and machine learning and also in cognitive science,” Martinez says. “And the reason is, I personally do not think that we can solve all these complex problems if we don't understand the brain.

“For example, one of the things that I worked on for many years is how to interpret nonverbal signals, including face and body motion. There was this belief that people would communicate emotion categories through their facial expressions. And we demonstrated over many, many years in our research group that that's not the case.

“I had a paper where I had an example where you could see just the face of a guy who was completely red, screaming like crazy. You show it to people, and they would say that this person is really angry at something — a very negative emotion. But when you show the actual picture, it was a soccer player with arms outstretched, running, screaming like mad, and you could see in the background the goalkeeper on the ground with the ball in sight. When you see it in that context, you understand that's not an angry person; that's a very happy person who is celebrating a goal.

Related content
Amazon’s Dan Roth on a hot new research topic — that he’s been studying for more than 25 years.

“This is the complexity of human cognition that with the computer vision and machine learning methods that we have now cannot be achieved. You are not including all this knowledge, all these concepts. You need to understand what soccer is and how it’s played. You need to understand that there are two teams, and that if you're running away from the other team’s goalkeeper, and the goalkeeper is disappointed, you’re celebrating. We take these things for granted, but they are very complex.

“One of the other variables that we showed is important is blood flow to the face. When you experience an emotion internally, your body releases what's called peptides, including hormones like testosterone and cortisol. And that actually changes the blood flow and blood composition of your body. And because the face is suffused with a huge number of blood vessels, when you experience an emotion, your face pulsates in color. And we actually showed that humans use that signal to interpret what you're experiencing.

“Until we published this in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no one even knew that signal existed. We use it all the time, yet we don't know that we use it. How many of those unknowns are out there about what we do to interpret the world? We don't even know how many unknowns.

“People are talking about, ‘When is machine learning going to achieve human intelligence?’ Well, it's an irrelevant question. For now, we cannot attain human-level intelligence, because we do not know what human intelligence is. Cognitive scientists, neuroscientists have written 500-, 700-page books trying to explain what human intelligence is. That's not the definition. That's a 700-page book.

“I'd like to see more help from the CVPR community to understand what human intelligence is and more work toward trying to imitate those things — including reasoning.”

Visual shopping

Related content
Three papers at CVPR present complementary methods to improve product discovery.

At Amazon, Martinez leads a team that uses computer vision to make shopping more convenient and enjoyable for customers of the Amazon store. One of the team’s projects, for instance, is “shoppable images”, images of rooms in which clicking on an object will pull up information about related products. Computer vision algorithms identify products that resemble those in the images.

“The idea is that, similar to when you go to a physical store, you walk through a set of showrooms that are decorated with a number of products, and when you find something that you like, you can click on the specific products here and find things that are similar,” Martinez explains.

Shoppable images launched in 2020, and this year, Martinez’s team extended the same functionality to images on product detail pages, enabling customers to, say, click on a lamp that’s just décor for a product shot of an armchair.

Currently, Martinez says, the team is working on algorithms that combine computer vision and specifications in the product catalogue to automatically overlay images with directional arrows indicating product dimensions. They’re also exploring the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to synthesize virtual showrooms, to expand the amount of shoppable content available to customers.

“Generative models are really good for generating single-object images, like a human face or a cat, a dog, a car,” Martinez says. “What I'm interested in is, ‘Can we generate realistic scenes, with multiple objects, multiple activities?’ Can you draw people interacting with one another meaningfully, and it looks realistic? Can you describe not only a noun in a dictionary — a product in our case — but can you describe actions, meaning the verbs of the dictionary? Can you edit those images to create videos that showcase viewpoint variation or illumination changes? Those are things that the scientific community has not fully addressed yet. And I think we are mature enough to start thinking about them and potentially addressing some of them.”

Research areas

Related content

US, WA, Bellevue
Conversational AI ModEling and Learning (CAMEL) team is part of Amazon Devices organization where our mission is to build a best-in-class Conversational AI that is intuitive, intelligent, and responsive, by developing superior Large Language Models (LLM) solutions and services which increase the capabilities built into the model and which enable utilizing thousands of APIs and external knowledge sources to provide the best experience for each request across millions of customers and endpoints. We are looking for a passionate, talented, and resourceful Applied Scientist in the field of LLM, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Recommender Systems and/or Information Retrieval, to invent and build scalable solutions for a state-of-the-art context-aware conversational AI. A successful candidate will have strong machine learning background and a desire to push the envelope in one or more of the above areas. The ideal candidate would also have hands-on experiences in building Generative AI solutions with LLMs, enjoy operating in dynamic environments, be self-motivated to take on challenging problems to deliver big customer impact, moving fast to ship solutions and then iterating on user feedback and interactions. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will leverage your technical expertise and experience to collaborate with other talented applied scientists and engineers to research and develop novel algorithms and modeling techniques to reduce friction and enable natural and contextual conversations. You will analyze, understand and improve user experiences by leveraging Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence. You will work on core LLM technologies, including Prompt Engineering and Optimization, Supervised Fine-Tuning, Learning from Human Feedback, Evaluation, Self-Learning, etc. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of novel products and services.
IL, Tel Aviv
Are you an inventive, curious, and driven Applied Scientist with a strong background in AI and Deep Learning? Join Amazon’s AWS Multimodal generative AI science team and be a catalyst for groundbreaking advancements in Computer Vision, Generative AI, and foundational models. As part of the AWS Multimodal generative AI science team, you’ll lead innovative research projects, develop state-of-the-art algorithms, and pioneer solutions that will directly impact millions of Amazon customers. Leveraging Amazon’s vast computing power, you’ll work alongside a supportive and diverse group of top-tier scientists and engineers, contributing to products that redefine the industry. Key job responsibilities * Lead research initiatives in Multimodal generative AI, pushing the boundaries of model efficiency, accuracy, and scalability. * Design, implement, and evaluate deep learning models in a production environment. * Collaborate with cross-functional teams to transfer research outcomes into scalable AWS services. * Publish in top-tier conferences and journals, keeping Amazon at the forefront of innovation. * Mentor and guide other scientists and engineers, fostering a culture of scientific curiosity and excellence.
GB, Cambridge
The Artificial General Intelligence team (AGI) has an exciting position for an Applied Scientist with a strong background NLP and Large Language Models to help us develop state-of-the-art conversational systems. As part of this team, you will collaborate with talented scientists and software engineers to enable conversational assistants capabilities to support the use of external tools and sources of information, and develop novel reasoning capabilities to revolutionise the user experience for millions of Alexa customers. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will develop innovative solutions to complex problems to extend the functionalities of conversational assistants . You will use your technical expertise to research and implement novel algorithms and modelling solutions in collaboration with other scientists and engineers. You will analyse customer behaviours and define metrics to enable the identification of actionable insights and measure improvements in customer experience. You will communicate results and insights to both technical and non-technical audiences through written reports, presentations and external publications.
US, WA, Bellevue
Conversational AI ModEling and Learning (CAMEL) team is part of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) organization where our mission is to create a best-in-class Conversational AI that is intuitive, intelligent, and responsive, by developing superior Large Language Models (LLM) solutions and services which increase the capabilities built into the model and which enable utilizing thousands of APIs and external knowledge sources to provide the best experience for each request across millions of customers and endpoints. We are looking for a passionate, talented, and resourceful Applied Scientist in the field of LLM, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Recommender Systems and/or Information Retrieval, to invent and build scalable solutions for a state-of-the-art context-aware conversational AI. A successful candidate will have strong machine learning background and a desire to push the envelope in one or more of the above areas. The ideal candidate would also have hands-on experiences in building Generative AI solutions with LLMs, enjoy operating in dynamic environments, be self-motivated to take on challenging problems to deliver big customer impact, moving fast to ship solutions and then iterating on user feedback and interactions. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will leverage your technical expertise and experience to collaborate with other talented applied scientists and engineers to research and develop novel algorithms and modeling techniques to reduce friction and enable natural and contextual conversations. You will analyze, understand and improve user experiences by leveraging Amazon’s heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence. You will work on core LLM technologies, including Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), In-Context Learning (ICL), Learning from Human Feedback (LHF), etc. Your work will directly impact our customers in the form of novel products and services.
US, WA, Seattle
We are seeking a highly skilled economist to measure and understand how each Customer Service activity impacts customers. This candidate's analysis will assist teams across Amazon to prioritize defect elimination efforts and optimize how we respond to customer contacts. This candidate will partner closely with our product, program, and tech teams to deliver their findings to users via systems and dashboards that guide Customer Service planning and policy rules. Key job responsibilities - Develop Causal, Economic, and Machine Learning models at scale. - Engage in economic analysis and raise the bar for research. - Inform strategic discussions with senior leaders across the company to guide policies. A day in the life If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply! Amazon offers a full range of benefits that support you and eligible family members, including domestic partners and their children. Benefits can vary by location, the number of regularly scheduled hours you work, length of employment, and job status such as seasonal or temporary employment. The benefits that generally apply to regular, full-time employees include: 1. Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage 2. Maternity and Parental Leave Options 3. Paid Time Off (PTO) 4. 401(k) Plan About the team The Worldwide defect elimination team's mission is to understand and resolve all issues impacting customers at scale. The Customer Service Economics and Optimization team is a force multiplier within this group, helping to understand the impact of these issues and our actions to optimize the customer experience.
US, WA, Seattle
We are building GenAI based shopping assistant for Amazon. We reimage Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience that helps you find answers to product questions, perform product comparisons, receive personalized product suggestions, and so much more, to easily find the perfect product for your needs. We’re looking for the best and brightest across Amazon to help us realize and deliver this vision to our customers right away. This will be a once in a generation transformation for Search, just like the Mosaic browser made the Internet easier to engage with three decades ago. If you missed the 90s—WWW, Mosaic, and the founding of Amazon and Google—you don’t want to miss this opportunity.
US, WA, Seattle
At Amazon, we believe that scientific innovation is essential to being the most customer-centric company in the world. Our scientists' ability to have an impact at scale allows us to attract some of the brightest minds in machine learning, artificial intelligence and related fields. Amazon scientists employ the company's working backwards method to identify problems to solve on behalf of customers in research areas ranging from machine learning to operations, GenAI, robotics, quantum computing, computer vision, economics, search, sustainability and more. Learn more about Amazon Science here: https://www.amazon.science/ We are hiring across multiple businesses and in many locations across the US. Apply here to learn more about open roles that could be a compelling fit for your background. Key job responsibilities You will be responsible for defining key research directions, adopting or inventing new machine learning techniques, conducting rigorous experiments, publishing results, and ensuring that research is translated into practice. You will develop long-term strategies, persuade teams to adopt those strategies, propose goals and deliver on them. You will also participate in organizational planning, hiring, mentorship and leadership development. You will be technically fearless and with a passion for building scalable science and engineering solutions. You will serve as a key scientific resource in full-cycle development (conception, design, implementation, testing to documentation, delivery, and maintenance).
NL, Amsterdam
Are you a MS or PhD student interested in a 2025 Internship in the field of machine learning, deep learning, speech, robotics, computer vision, optimization, quantum computing, automated reasoning, or formal methods? If so, we want to hear from you! We are looking for students interested in using a variety of domain expertise to invent, design and implement state-of-the-art solutions for never-before-solved problems. You can find more information about the Amazon Science community as well as our interview process via the links below; https://www.amazon.science/ https://amazon.jobs/content/en/career-programs/university/science https://amazon.jobs/content/en/how-we-hire/university-roles/applied-science Key job responsibilities As an Applied Science Intern, you will own the design and development of end-to-end systems. You’ll have the opportunity to write technical white papers, create roadmaps and drive production level projects that will support Amazon Science. You will work closely with Amazon scientists, and other science interns to develop solutions and deploy them into production. You will have the opportunity to design new algorithms, models, or other technical solutions whilst experiencing Amazon’s customer focused culture. The ideal intern must have the ability to work with diverse groups of people and cross-functional teams to solve complex business problems. A day in the life At Amazon, you will grow into the high impact, visionary person you know you’re ready to be. Every day will be filled with developing new skills and achieving personal growth. How often can you say that your work changes the world? At Amazon, you’ll say it often. Join us and define tomorrow. Some more benefits of an Amazon Science internship include; • All of our internships offer a competitive stipend/salary • Interns are paired with an experienced manager and mentor(s) • Interns receive invitations to different events such as intern program initiatives or site events • Interns can build their professional and personal network with other Amazon Scientists • Interns can potentially publish work at top tier conferences each year About the team Applicants will be reviewed on a rolling basis and are assigned to teams aligned with their research interests and experience prior to interviews. Start dates are available throughout the year and durations can vary in length from 3-6 months for full time internships. This role may available across multiple locations in the EMEA region (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, UAE, and UK). Please note these are not remote internships.
US, WA, Seattle
Come be a part of a rapidly expanding $35 billion-dollar global business. At Amazon Business, a fast-growing startup passionate about building solutions, we set out every day to innovate and disrupt the status quo. We stand at the intersection of tech & retail in the B2B space developing innovative purchasing and procurement solutions to help businesses and organizations thrive. At Amazon Business, we strive to be the most recognized and preferred strategic partner for smart business buying. Bring your insight, imagination and a healthy disregard for the impossible. Join us in building and celebrating the value of Amazon Business to buyers and sellers of all sizes and industries. Unlock your career potential. The AB Sales Analytics, Data, Product and Tech (ADAPTech) team uses CRM, data, product, and science to improve Sales productivity and performance. It has four pillars: 1) SalesTech maintains Salesforce to enable Sales workflows, and supports >2K users in nine countries; 2) Product and Science builds tools embedded with bespoke Machine Learning (ML) and GenAI large language models to enable sales reps to prioritize top accounts, position the right Amazon Business (AB) product features, and take actions based on critical customer events; 3) Sales Data Management (SDM) and Sales Account Management (SAM) enrich customer profiles and business hierarchies while improving productivity through automation and integration of internal/external tools; and 4) Business Intelligence (BI) enables self-service reporting simplifying access to key insights through WBRs and dashboards. Sales teams leverage these products to identify which customers to target, what features to target them with, and when to target them, in order to capture their share of wallet. A successful Applied Scientist at Amazon demonstrates bias for action and operates in a startup environment, with outstanding leadership skills, and proven ability to build and manage medium-scale modeling projects, identify data requirements, build methodology and tools that are statistically grounded. We need great leaders to think big and design new solutions to solve complex problems using machine learning (ML) and Generative AI techniques to improve our customers’ experience when using AB. You have hands-on experience making the right decisions about technology, models and methodology choices. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist, you will primarily leverage machine learning techniques and generative AI to outreach customers based on their life cycle stage, behavioral patterns, and purchase history. You may also perform text mining and insight analysis of real-time customer conversations and make the model learn and recommend the solutions. Your work will directly impact the trust customers place in Amazon Business. You will partner with product management and technical leadership to identify opportunities to innovate customer journey experiences. You will identify new areas of investment and work to align product roadmaps to deliver on these opportunities. As a science leader, you will not only develop unique scientific solutions, but also play a crucial role in shaping strategies. Additional responsibilities include: -Design, implement, test, deploy and maintain innovative data and machine learning solutions to further the customer experience. -Create experiments and prototype implementations of new learning algorithms and prediction techniques -Develop algorithms for new capabilities and trace decisions in the data and assess how proposed changes could potentially impact business metrics to cater needs of Amazon Business Sales -Build models that measure incremental value, predict growth, define and conduct experiments to optimize engagement of AB customers, and communicate insights and recommendations to product, sales, and finance partners. A day in the life In this role, you will be a technical expert with significant scope and impact. You will work with Technical Product Managers, Data Engineers, other Scientists, and Salesforce developers, to build new and enhance existing ML models to optimize customer experience. You will prototype and test new ideas, iterate quickly, and deploy models to production. Also, you will conduct in-depth data analysis and feature engineering to build robust ML models.
US, WA, Seattle
Amazon continues to invest heavily in building our world class advertising business. Our products are strategically important to our Retail and Marketplace businesses, driving long term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks daily, breaking fresh ground to create world-class products. We are highly motivated, collaborative and fun-loving with an entrepreneurial spirit and strong bias for action. With a broad mandate to experiment and innovate, we are growing at an unprecedented rate with a seemingly endless range of new opportunities. The Sponsored Products Monetization team is broadly responsible for pricing of ads on Amazon search pages, balancing short-term and long-term ad revenue growth to drive sustainable marketplace health. As a Senior Applied Scientist on our team, you will be responsible for defining the science and technical strategy for one of our most impactful marketplace controls, creating lasting value for Amazon and our advertising customers. You will help to identify unique opportunities to create customized and delightful shopping experience for our growing marketplaces worldwide. Your job will be identify big opportunities for the team that can help to grow Sponsored Products business working with retail partner teams, Product managers, Software engineers and PMs. You will have opportunity to design, run and analyze A/B experiments to improve the experience of millions of Amazon shoppers while driving quantifiable revenue impact. More importantly, you will have the opportunity to broaden your technical skills in an environment that thrives on creativity, experimentation, and product innovation. Key job responsibilities - Lead science, tech and business strategy and roadmap for Sponsored Products Monetization - Drive alignment across multiple organizations for science, engineering and product strategy to achieve business goals - Lead and mentor scientists and engineers across teams to develop, test, launch and improve of science models designed to optimize the shopper experience and deliver long term value for Amazon and advertisers - Develop state of the art experimental approaches and ML models - Drive end-to-end Machine Learning projects that have a high degree of ambiguity, scale, complexity - Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large-scale data analysis, machine-learning model development, model validation and serving - Research new and innovative machine learning approaches - Recruit Scientists to the team and provide mentorship