54 tags and a search bar: an AI photo library for a property company

This client came to us with a problem we recognised instantly. Thousands of gorgeous photos of homes and interiors, all sitting in their Microsoft 365 storage, and no realistic way of finding any particular one.

Their team needed to be able to answer requests like “modern kitchens with an island and lots of natural light” or “exteriors with a pool, shot at dusk” without losing a morning to it. And the photos had to stay exactly where they were. Nobody wanted to reorganise ten years of folders, least of all us.

We started with words, not code

Before any AI came near it, we sat down with the team and agreed on a list of 54 tags. Room types, features, finishes, styles, settings. The words they actually use when they’re looking for something, not what a technical person thinks they should use.

This took longer than writing the code. It was also the most important thing we did. If the vocabulary’s wrong, nothing that comes after it works properly.

Then we connected it

The system plugs securely into their Microsoft storage and reads the photos where they live. It doesn’t move anything and doesn’t write anything back without someone approving it.

If the vocabulary’s wrong, nothing that comes after it works properly.

The AI goes first

Each photo is shown to an AI vision model along with the 54 tags and some fairly strict instructions: only use tags from this list, and only when you’re confident. It looks at the image and sends back its tags. It got through thousands of photos in the time it would take a person to do a few dozen.

People go second

The AI is good, but it isn’t the client’s eye. So we built a review screen showing a grid of images with their suggested tags. The team can approve, remove or add tags in bulk, and if the AI has got something consistently wrong across a batch, it’s one click to fix the lot.

And then you just search

The search page is deliberately simple. Pick or type a few tags, combine them, and the matching photos appear. Kitchen plus island plus natural light gives you exactly that.

What we love most is that photos which had been paid for and then forgotten about are suddenly being used again in listings and marketing. Because people can actually find them.