A L G O R I T H M I A

August 11, 2016

Colorize It

Distribution, Reach, and Monetization for University Algorithms ➤ UC Berkeley team of expert software developers created a state-of-the-art colorization deep learning model ➤ Despite development expertise, team was limited in ability to share work with developer community or users ➤ Algorithmia provides platform for distribution, reach, and monetization of algorithms, at global scale ➤ Release of the colorization model on Algorithmia resulted in massive global awareness and use Professor Alexei A. Efros and his academic research team at Berkeley created a novel deep learning model that uses neural networks to add realistic color to black and white images. They set up a public site on Github to showcase their academic paper but it was not possible to include a live demo of the algorithm so that 1

end users of the solution could process their images in real time. While the Berkeley team are experts in the field of algorithm development and have written a state-of-the-art colorization model, they don’t have as much experience or the time to either market their algorithm or stand up a cloud-based algorithm hosting service that can scale to millions of global users. This is a common story among academic researchers – one can author a new algorithm that may be useful to thousands of developers and delight millions of users, but existing solutions such as academic papers and public code repositories are not an effective way to achieve distribution, reach, and monetization of algorithms.

1 http://richzhang.github.io/colorization/

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Kenny Daniel, a co-founder of Algorithmia, experienced the same frustration as the Berkeley team when he was a PhD candidate at USC in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Kenny’s graduate school achievements are what most PhD candidates consider signs of success - published articles, speaking engagements around the world, and a seven figure grant from the federal government. However, his route optimization algorithms languished in academic articles where software developers were unlikely to find and use them in real world applications. Kenny’s desire to solve these distribution inefficiencies resulted in the creation of Algorithmia.

Algorithmia The Technology Algorithmia is the world’s largest algorithm marketplace, containing more than 2,300 algorithms which are composable, interoperable, and portable. Algorithm authors can write an algorithm in any supported language and then make it discoverable and accessible to the global community of application developers via a simple REST API. Application developers can access this API through clients for Java, Scala, Python, JavaScript, Node.js, R, Ruby, Rust, or via HTTP. The Business The Algorithmia platform reduces the operational burden and cost of licensing for technology transfer offices, expands the range of intellectual property that can be made available and promoted to application developers, offers a comprehensive service to easily implement and run algorithms in the cloud, and provides monetization and business analytics to track performance and usage.

How Algorithmia Works with Universities

Since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, US universities have significantly increased their

investments in technology transfer. Similar laws have passed in many East Asian and EU countries. Despite the increased volume of licensing transactions and revenues, a university technology transfer office may still choose not to market or license much of the long-tail of their software algorithms because the administrative and transactional costs for these activities are high but the potential economic return may be highly speculative.

Algorithmia works with many universities to identify algorithms for which there may be high potential

market demand and then helps university researchers make those available. Algorithmia has a dedicated Algorithms Team composed of expert engineers who routinely read academic papers and analyze the market demand for algorithm categories in our marketplace. For example, neural net based computer vision algorithms that make use of a shared CPU/GPU architecture are in high demand right now and are more likely to receive API calls which generate revenue from application developers.

In addition to the licensing opportunity of the Algorithmia marketplace, Algorithmia also facilitates

off-marketplace licensing transactions between our large enterprise customers and algorithm authors. In some instances, an enterprise customer prefers to implement a virtual private cloud or on-premises version of Algorithmia rather than using the public marketplace. If such an enterprise customer then seeks to use an algorithm available in the public marketplace, Algorithmia contacts the algorithm authors in order to set up a licensing arrangement, thereby providing an additional opportunity for algorithm authors to monetize their intellectual property.

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By lowering the operational burden and costs of licensing and distribution and increasing the probability of an economic return, Algorithmia enables university tech transfer offices to make available and monetize more of their intellectual property. University researchers benefit from increased awareness of their work and time savings from activities that are not closely related to their research.

Colorize It on Algorithmia The Algorithms Team at Algorithmia seeks opportunities to post new algorithms that enable developers to build new software solutions. The Algorithmia team became aware of the Colorize It solution when Alexei’s team published their original paper Colorful Image Colorization.

Results: Distribution

Alexei’s team did not have the tools, time, or resources to set up a cloud service to make the algorithm available as a live solution - which is true for almost every software team except those at very large technology companies. Using the Algorithmia platform, it took one Algorithmia engineer less than 48 hours to make it available to the global community of application developers and consumers. After one week, the Colorize It algorithm was accessed by more than 500,000 unique users who spent an average of four minutes and forty-four seconds on the page where the algorithm is posted. These users created more than 1,000,000 colorized images 2

and subsequently downloaded more than 111,000 of those. The Algorithmia site did not experience any major delays or interruptions and during the process communicated with users and gathered their feedback in order to make the user experience even better.

The Colorize It model continues to receive more interest from both application developers and users - several iPhone developers have already created apps that use the Colorize It algorithm and the Algortihmia API: Colorize app on iTunes, Flavor on the Mac App Store, and Photomyne available on iOS and Android.

Results: Reach

The Berkeley team also wanted to raise awareness of their work with as many application developers

and users as possible. Again, the Algorithmia team has certain advantages not available to university researchers who are focused on research and development rather than running a business. For example, Algorithmia leveraged its expertise in content marketing, existing relationships with the press, and social marketing experience to amplify the awareness of Colorize It among developers and users around the world. The solution was broadcast through mainstream press channels and Algorithmia driven social media, both of which resulted in a second wave of resharing by third parties on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and other social media sites. Press The story about Colorize It was released to the press by Algorithmia and was then subsequently published in more than 200 different press articles that included backlinks to the solution. The sites posting this story had an estimated audience of greater than 10 million users. The dispersion of press articles was from 100 different countries around the world, published in 41 different languages, and resulted in over 500,000 users coming from sites such as The Verge, Gizmodo Spain, Wired Germany and UK, Engadget Germany, ZDnet, Yahoo! Finance, and many others.

2 http://colorize-it.com

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Colorize It featured in press articles in all of the countries highlighted blue

Social Media (Generated by Algorithmia) Algorithmia’s social media engagement resulted in more than 31,000 shares and comments across the major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The Algorithmia article made the front page of Hacker News (reaching as high as the # 4 top trending article), a leading Internet site focused on software development. Social Media (Generated by Third Parties) The Colorize It story was shared by individuals more than 13,000 times across the major social media sites. Colorize It stories received more than 4,700 upvotes and 500 comments on Reddit, which has one of the largest online software development communities.

Results: Monetization

Royalties were not charged for use of the Colorize It algorithm because it was posted as an open source

algorithm by the Algorithmia team and was not associated with a developer account. However, if a royalty of 12 Algorithmia credits per API call had been charged, then Alexei and his team would have earned $952.61 just in the first week of availability of Colorize It. The Algorithmia team’s goal is to help more university researchers and labs earn revenue from their work.

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Conclusion

Algorithmia provides a way for university researchers to make optimal use of their time creating state-of-the-art software solutions and raise awareness of their work. Algorithmia amplifies a technology transfer office’s ability to achieve distribution, license, and monetize university intellectual property without incurring a significant cost or operational burden.

Algorithmia is working with universities and research labs all over the world to bring their teams and researchers onto our platform. While we may not always be able to repeat the success we enjoyed with Colorize It, we are very confident that a tremendous amount of university intellectual property value can be unlocked if it becomes discoverable and accessible to the global population of software developers and consumers. If you would like to learn more about how Algorithmia can create value for your university, reach out to us at the contact information listed below. Contact Information John Combs Algorithmia, Inc. (415) 741-1491 john@algorithmia.com

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Colorized Image Examples

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Press Headline Examples

http://techxcite.com/topic/25706.html

https://www.kocpc.com.tw/archives/102878

http://es.gizmodo.com/con-esta-sencilla-herramienta-podras-dar-color-a-todas-1783878508

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/18/12216406/colorize-black-and-white-photos-algorithmia-tool-image-editing

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