Our new AI-powered search helps you find the right assets faster, even if they aren't meticulously tagged.
Here’s how it works
Search naturally: You can now use everyday language to search for assets. For example, typing "a happy family enjoying summer outdoors" will return relevant results, even if those exact words aren’t in the asset’s metadata.
No more over-tagging: You don’t need to spend time tagging every possible descriptive term for your assets. The AI understands the general content and context of an image, saving you hours of admin work.
Get smarter results: The AI interprets what you’re looking for, combining your custom fields with its ability to “see” what’s in the asset. It means better results, faster, with less effort on your part.
For instance, if you're looking for lifestyle imagery for a summer campaign, the AI search can find photos of people outdoors, enjoying picnics, or showcasing summer products—even if they aren’t specifically tagged with all those details.
However, for highly specific searches—like "lifestyle shot from the Spring 2024 campaign"—you’ll still want to include those key details in your custom fields so the search bar can find them.
When you need precision
While our new AI-powered search is designed to save you time by delivering relevant results - even without exact metadata matches - sometimes, you might want pinpoint accuracy. For those moments, select a keyword from the autocomplete dropdown, or use filters to refine your search.
Here’s how to perform an exact search:
Navigate to the Browse page or All Assets page
Expand the filter bar to reveal the filter options available
Use your custom fields or tags to define exactly what you’re looking for—such as specific campaign names, dates, or other metadata.
This method ensures your results are based only on the exact terms or fields you input, giving you complete control over what you find.
When to perform a non-enhanced search
You can disable the AI-search at any time by toggling off the setting within the search bar. This will revert the search to a traditional non-enhanced Dash search. This can be useful for doing more specific searches where you only want those specific results. You can read about traditional searches in our article "How to use the Dash search bar".
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does adding more search terms to my AI search terms increase my results, rather than reduce them, like in a traditional search?
Let's take an example:
Searching the word sushi 👉 15 results.
Searching sushi in New York 👉 50 results.
You may be expecting the latter search to bring back less results, as we're trying to change our search to only photos of sushi that are in New York, rather than all sushi. However, with AI search, it works a little differently, and here's why:
1. AI is matching concepts, not just exact terms
When you search for “sushi”, the AI looks for images (or content) closely related to the single concept of sushi.
When you search for “sushi in New York”, the AI now has two concepts to work with: sushi and New York.
This means it can now retrieve content that matches either, or both, therefore broadening the scope.
💡 Analogy
If you asked a friend, “Do you have anything about sushi?” they might only show you Japanese restaurants or sushi-making guides.
But if you said, “What about sushi in New York?”, they might also show you NYC food blogs, restaurant reviews, travel photos—even if they only partially match one part of that phrase.
2. More concepts = wider net
Adding "New York" tells the AI to look for anything that is somewhat similar to that whole idea. So:
An image tagged "New York" might now score as slightly relevant, even if it’s not sushi-related.
An image with sushi and New York together will score highly relevant and appear at the top.
So paradoxically, adding more terms can increase the total number of results, even though the top results are more focused and helpful.
To summarise:
Query | Conceptual Scope | Total Results | Top Matches Focused On |
| 1 concept = "sushi" | Narrower | Sushi only |
| 2 concepts = "sushi", "New York" | Broader | Sushi in New York (ideally), but also partials |