- Global media asset library goes beyond keyword matching to understand actual visual content
- Content review time is reduced by 92% and customers find the perfect creative asset in 90% less time
At re:Invent 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced that 123RF, a royalty-free stock media platform headquartered in Malaysia and with over 230 million assets available to 12.4 million users worldwide, has launched a service that uses generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) to understand video content. Initial testing of 123RF on a sample of 5 million videos doubled the accuracy of video descriptors and improved the relevance of searches to autonomously understand the content of videos and images using Amazon Nova. This implementation will particularly benefit 123RF’s e-commerce customers who need to quickly find the right videos and images to pair with their products, and will directly impact the number of products they can list each day.
Intelligent content detection
Traditional search often yields irrelevant results if authors submit inaccurate or insufficient tags or keywords. For example, when a user searches for “green bag,” an AI-powered system analyzes the actual visual content to return images and videos of the green bag itself, rather than unrelated clips that just have a green background or happen to have the word “green” in their tags. 123RF now uses AI to automatically detect trademark logos and flag branded content to categorize it into license categories such as commercial use and royalty-free. AI can identify clothing and branded product trademark patterns in images and videos – subtle details that traditional checklist methods often miss – and automatically flag them for appropriate licensing classification.
“AWS has fundamentally changed the way 123RF operates, turning us into an AI-powered creative enabler. Our marketing team can now launch campaigns 35% faster. This efficiency allows our team to focus less on repetitive tasks and more on contributing to the creator economy,” said Bernadine Michael, CMO at 123RF. “The real breakthrough is how Gen AI on AWS democratizes creativity across our global subscriber base. Designers and marketers who previously spent hours searching for the perfect asset can now instantly find exactly what they need, regardless of language or cultural background.”
Building a global creative asset marketplace
123RF processes over 3 million image uploads each month, each requiring thorough compliance, copyright, and quality verification. Previously, this labor-intensive process required 30 to 40 human reviewers to manually process approximately 3,000 images each day. The media platform also faced challenges in scaling its Gen AI capabilities globally, as most of its user-generated metadata such as titles, keywords, and descriptions are in English, but the platform needed multilingual support in 15 languages. This went beyond direct translation and required handling idioms and cultural nuances. 
123RF has transformed both its operations and customer experience, reducing content review time by 92% while allowing customers to find the perfect creative asset in 90% less time with significantly greater accuracy.
“Our AI technology, powered by AWS, can now ‘see’ images just like humans do,” explained Phoebe Liew. (photograph)CTO, 123RF. “When someone uploads an image, our system instantly captures what makes that image visually unique, such as identifying a particular architectural style or recognizing the composition of a sunset landscape. This visual understanding means we can automatically match similar images, regardless of what language the description is in. Rather than relying on keywords that may be inaccurate or missing, we’re analyzing the actual visual elements.”
To support rapid growth and global expansion, 123RF leveraged multiple AWS Gen AI capabilities that work together to scale operations.
- 123RF used Amazon Bedrock and Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku model to build a professional translator that can capture cultural nuance and context. For example, the English word “freedom” means individual autonomy, but the Japanese equivalent “freedom” can suggest selfishness, which means it may not have the same positive, universal resonance. The system helps users autonomously identify certain elements such as copyright icons, logos, and quality defects while adhering to these nuances.
- With Amazon Nova’s understanding models, including Nova Pro and Nova Lite, 123RF helps protect users by understanding the copyright risks of content before it reaches the market.
“123RF demonstrates how AI can transform creative workflows. Tasks that once took days for designers can now be completed in minutes, allowing Malaysian companies to compete on the global stage. This has set a new benchmark for what is possible beyond the stock media industry,” said Hussein Mohd. Ali (photograph)Malaysia, AWS Country Manager. “Our Unlocking Ambitions research reveals that startups are leading the way in this space, with 48% already implementing AI solutions and nearly a third building entirely new AI-driven products.”
