Media|Product Engineering|Increase Efficiency

Refik Anadol StudioImage data processing

Processing test batches dragged for 30 hours. Vertex AI now runs the pipeline 23x faster, querying billions of nature images in seconds.

Jan 25, 2026|11 days ago

Key results

Processing Speedup
23x
Generation Speedup
7x
Accuracy Increase
~40%

The company

Refik Anadol Studio logo

Refik Anadol Studio

refikanadolstudio.com

Media arts and design studio specializing in AI-driven architectural installations.

IndustryMedia
LocationLos Angeles, CA, USA
Employees11-50
Founded2014

Result highlights

  • Data processing time cut from 30 hours to 80 mins
  • 7x faster image embedding generation
  • 40% higher caption accuracy vs open-source model

The story

A media art studio preparing a permanent exhibition powered by an AI model trained on one of the world's largest datasets of the natural world.

Processing the massive image archive was prohibitively slow, with test batches taking 30 hours to complete. Previous captioning tools produced only generic tags, lacking the scientific specificity needed to create a knowledgeable AI collaborator.

The studio orchestrated a parallelized pipeline on Vertex AI to handle object detection and generate image embeddings as a single reproducible process. Gemini 2.5 Flash generates scientifically accurate captions, while BigQuery manages metadata to allow instant searching across billions of records. This architecture separates raw file storage from searchable metadata to enable high-speed Retrieval-Augmented Generation workflows.

Quotes

Implementation partner

Z

Supported the studio in building its new data processing technique on Google Cloud.

IndustryTechnology
LocationLos Angeles, CA, USA
Employees51-250
Founded2022

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