Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions: Finding Your Meme Twin with Embeddings & Vector Databases

Track: Artificial Intelligence
Abstract
Do you look like a famous meme character? Does someone you know? Knowing this information is vital—both for your career and your personal life. After all, am I the only one around here who wants to avoid [Angry Walter](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/am-i-the-only-one-around-here)? And who *wouldn't* want to work with [Success Kid](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/success-kid-i-hate-sandcastles).

But can we even find out if we have a meme twin? There are lots of memes. And lots of people. How could we possibly search them all? Well, it's easier than you think if we turn those memes into embeddings and search them with a vector database!

But what's an embedding? And what's a vector database? Well, that's what I'll cover in this session. I'll begin by exploring embeddings, showing how unstructured data, such as text and images, can be translated into hyper-dimensional arrays—called vectors—using both common and custom AI models. Then I'll talk about vector databases, covering what they are and how you can use them to store and search those embeddings with embeddings of your own.

Of course, we'll do this all by example. I've turned all the big memes—from [Ancient Aliens Guy](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ancient-aliens) to [Zombie Boy](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/184608242/zombie-boy)—into embeddings and have loaded them into a vector database. I've built an application around these embeddings and that database. I'll show you the code and the queries of this application so that you can build something similar for yourself. And, most importantly, we'll take some photos during the session and use it all to find your meme twin!

So, are you ready to find your meme twin? Or are you ready to learn how to use this technology? I say, [Why Not Both](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have-both).
Guy Royse
Guy works for Redis as a Developer Advocate. Combining his decades of experience in writing software with a passion for learning—and for sharing what he has learned—Guy explores interesting topics and spreads the knowledge he has gained around developer communities worldwide. Teaching and community have long been a focus for Guy. He runs his local JavaScript meetup in Ohio and has served on the selection committees of numerous conferences. He'll happily speak anywhere that will have him and has even has helped teach programming at a prison in central Ohio. In his personal life, Guy is a hard-boiled geek interested in role-playing games, science fiction, and technology. He also has a slightly less geeky interest in history and linguistics. In his spare time he likes to camp and studies history and linguistics. Guy lives in Ohio with his wife, his sons, and an entire wall of board and role-playing games.