Online auction company eBay Inc. announced that it has acquired Israeli computer vision startup Corrigon Ltd. for an undisclosed amount.

According to eBay, Corrigon’s image recognition tools will be a valuable addition to the online shopper experience. Corrigon specializes in enhancing online shopping with computer vision, a branch of artificial intelligence research that focuses on recognizing and classifying the objects in an image.

The company says its technology allows users to mouse over an item in an image to see a popup link to an online store where they can buy that object. In its example, Corrigon showed that mousing over a woman carrying a purse might show you where you can buy that specific purse.

In its announcement, eBay was vague about how exactly it plans on using Corrigon’s tools, but the company did say that computer vision will allow its systems more accurately match images to products, ensuring that customers are getting the item they actually want. It seems likely that eBay would also offer the ability to search for a product using an image, as Corrigon has already demonstrated that capability.

eBay said that Corrigon is part of its ongoing investment in structured data, which includes two other acquisitions this year alone. These include SalesPredict, another Israeli company that predicts buyer habits, and Expertmaker, a machine learning and Big Data company.

“As we continue to evolve the eBay shopping experience, Corrigon’s technology and expertise will help buyers find the best results when shopping on eBay through experiences that were not possible a year ago, before our investments in structured data,” Amit Menipaz, vice president and general manager of structured data at eBay, said in a statement. “Corrigon represents eBay’s third acquisition in the structured data space this year, further underscoring our commitment to powering deeper inventory insights for our sellers and compelling new user experiences for our buyers.”

Menipaz has previously commented that eBay’s structured data investment is “a multi-year journey,” so it seems likely that there will be other acquisitions in the company’s future.

Computer vision is one of the hottest topics in AI research today, and image recognition has a wide range of uses that extends beyond simply improving your online shopping experience. For example, Facebook uses image recognition to automatically suggest which friends should be tagged in a picture, and companies such as Microsoft are working on creating AI that can detect and diagnose different types of cancer.

Image courtesy of eBay Inc.