Smart Tags for AEM Assets using-smart-tags

Last update: Wed Jul 30 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
  • Applies to:
  • Experience Manager as a Cloud Service

CREATED FOR:

  • Admin
  • User

Organizations possess numerous digital assets, and this number continues to grow rapidly. Searching for a specific asset amidst such a vast amount of data poses a significant challenge. To address this, metadata and tags are employed to enhance the searchability of digital assets. Organizations use taxonomy-controlled vocabularies in asset metadata. These typically consist of keyword lists that employees, partners, and customers commonly use to refer to and locate digital assets.

Smart Tags are keywords that not only appear in the text but also best describe the asset. Tagging assets with taxonomy-controlled vocabulary ensures they can be easily identified and retrieved through search.

For instance, words arranged alphabetically in a dictionary are easier to find than randomly scattered ones. Tagging serves a similar purpose. It organizes assets according to business taxonomy, ensuring that the most relevant ones appear in search results. For example, a car manufacturer can tag car images with model names, so that only relevant images are displayed when designing a promotional campaign. Whether tagging “runners” or “running shoes,” users do not need to worry about typos, spelling variations, or alternate search terms—Smart Tags recognize them all.

In the background, the functionality uses the artificially intelligent framework of Adobe Sensei automatically applies Smart Tags to uploaded assets—by default—along with text aligned to the business taxonomy.

Prerequisites and configuration smart-tags-prereqs-config

Smart Tags is automatically provisioned for Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service and hence no configuration is required.

Smart Tags workflow smart-tags-workflow

Adobe Sensei powered smart tagging uses artificial intelligence models to analyze content and add tags to the assets. Thereby-reducing time for DAM users to deliver rich experiences to their customers. The Smart Tags are displayed in descending order of their confidence score in asset properties.

  • Image-based assets
    For images, the Smart Tags are based on some visual aspect. Images in many formats are tagged using smart content services. Smart Tags are applied to the supported file types that generate renditions in JPG and PNG format.

  • Video-based assets
    For video-based assets, tagging is enabled by default in Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service. Likewise Image and text based tags, videos are also auto-tagged when you upload new videos or reprocess existing ones. Adobe Sensei generates two sets of tags for a video: One set corresponds to objects, scenes, and attributes in that video, whereas, the other set relates to actions such as drinking, running, and jogging. Also check opt out video smart tagging.

  • Text-based assets
    For supported assets, Experience Manager already extracts the text, which is then indexed and is used to search for the assets. However, Smart Tags based on keywords in the text provide a dedicated, structured, and higher priority search facet. The latter helps improve asset discovery as compared to a search index.
    For text-based assets, the efficacy of Smart Tags does not depend on the amount of text in the asset but on the relevant keywords or entities present in the text of the asset.

    Smart-tag-types

Smart Tags are implemented in AEM Assets using the following workflow:

  1. Create or upload an asset in AEM. Out of the box tags are generated for image, video, and text based Assets.

  2. If you find that specific tags are not generated, then you can train your image-type tags accordingly. Refer to Smart Tags training.

Supported file formats for Smart Tags supported-file-formats

Images (MIME types)
Text-based assets (file formats)
Video assets (file formats and codecs)
image/jpeg
CSV
MP4 (H264/AVC)
image/tiff
DOC
MKV (H264/AVC)
image/png
DOCX
MOV (H264/AVC, Motion JPEG)
image/bmp
HTML
AVI (indeo4)
image/gif
PDF
FLV (H264/AVC, vp6f)
image/pjpeg
PPT
WMV (WMV2)
image/x-portable-anymap
PPTX
image/x-portable-bitmap
RTF
image/x-portable-graymap
SRT
image/x-portable-pixmap
TXT
image/x-rgb
VTT
image/x-xbitmap
image/x-xpixmap
image/x-icon
image/photoshop
image/x-photoshop
image/psd
image/vnd.adobe.photoshop

Preparing an asset for out of the box smart tagging

When you upload assets to Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service, the uploaded assets are processed. Once the processing is complete, see the Basic tab of asset Properties page. Smart Tags are automatically added to the assets under Smart Tags. Asset microservices uses Adobe Sensei to create these Smart Tags.

Smart Tags are added to videos and seen in Basic tab of asset Properties

IMPORTANT
You are advised to review these automatically generated tags to ensure that they conform to your brand and its values.

Untagged Assets in DAM smart-tag-existing-assets

The existing or older assets in DAM are not smart tagged automatically. You need to Reprocess Assets manually to generate Smart Tags for them. Once the process completes, navigate to the Properties page of any asset within the folder. The automatically added tags are seen in Smart Tags section in Basic tab. These applied Smart Tags are sorted in descending order of confidence score.

Confidence Score confidence-score

Your asset search results are ranked based on the confidence scores, which generally improve search results beyond what an inspection of the assigned tags of any asset suggests. Inaccurate tags often have low confidence scores so they seldom appear at the top of the Smart Tags list for assets.

NOTE
Manual tags are assigned a confidence of 100% (maximum confidence). Therefore, if there are assets with manual tags that match the search query, they are displayed before Smart Tags matching the search query.

Moderate Smart tags moderate-smart-tags

Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service allows you to curate the Smart Tags to:

  • remove inaccurate tags assigned to your brand assets.

  • refine tag-based searches for assets by ensuring that your asset appears in search results for the most relevant tags. It, therefore, eliminates the chances of unrelated assets from showing up in search results.

  • assign a higher rank to a tag to increase its relevance with respect to an asset. Promoting a tag for an asset increases the chances of the particular asset appearing in search results when a search is performed based on that tag.

To know more about how to moderate the Smart Tags for assets, see Manage Smart Tags.

Moderate video Smart Tags

NOTE
Any tags that are moderated using the steps in Manage Smart Tags are not remembered on reprocessing of the asset. The original sets of tags are displayed again.

Manage Smart Tags and asset searches manage-smart-tags-and-searches

You can curate Smart Tags to remove any inaccurate tags that may have been assigned to your brand assets, so that only the most relevant tags are displayed.

Moderating Smart Tags also helps refine tag-based searches for assets by ensuring that your assets appear in search results for the most relevant tags. Essentially, it helps eliminate the chances of unrelated assets from showing up in search results.

You can also assign a higher rank to a tag to increase the tag’s relevance for the asset. Promoting a tag for an asset increases the chances of the asset appearing in search results when a search is performed based on the particular tag.

To moderate the Smart Tags of your digital assets:

  1. In the search field, search for digital assets based on a tag.

  2. To identify the digital assets that you do not find relevant to your search, inspect the search results.

  3. Select an asset, and then select Manage tags icon from the toolbar.

  4. From the Manage Tags page, inspect the tags. If you do not want the asset to be searched based on a specific tag, then select the tag and select Delete icon from the toolbar. Alternatively, select close icon next to the label.

  5. To assign a higher rank to a tag, select the tag and select Promote icon from the toolbar. The tag you promote is moved to the Tags section.

  6. Select Save and then select OK to close the Success dialog.

  7. Navigate to the Properties page for the asset. Observe that the tag that you promoted is assigned a high relevance and, therefore, appears higher in the search results.

By default, Experience Manager combines the search terms with an AND or OR clause to find any of the search terms in the applied Smart Tags. Using Smart Tags does not change this default behavior. For example, consider searching for woman running. Assets with just woman or just running keyword in the metadata do not appear in the search results by default. However, an asset tagged with either woman or running using Smart Tags appears in such a search query. So the search results are a combination of,

  • Assets with woman and running keywords in the metadata.

  • Assets smart tagged with either of the keywords.

The search results that match all search terms in metadata fields are displayed first, followed by the search results that match any of the search terms in the Smart Tags. In the above example, the approximate order of display of search results is:

  1. matches of woman running in the various metadata fields.
  2. matches of woman running in Smart Tags.
  3. matches of woman or of running in Smart Tags.

Opt out of smart tagging opt-out-smart-tagging

As the automated tagging of assets runs in parallel to other asset processing tasks like thumbnail creation and metadata extraction, it can be time consuming. To expedite the asset processing, you can opt out of smart tagging on upload at folder level. To opt out of automated Smart Tags generation for assets uploaded to specific folder:

  1. Open Asset Processing tab in folder Properties.

  2. In Smart Tags for Videos menu, for example, Inherited option is selected by default and video smart tag is enabled.

    When the Inherited option is selected, the inherited folder path is also visible along with the information whether it is set to Enable or Disable.

    Disable smart tagging

  3. Select Disable to opt out of smart tagging uploaded to the folder.

  4. Similarly, you can opt out smart tagging for Smart Tags for Text, Smart Tags for Image, and Color Tags for Images.

IMPORTANT
If you have opted out of tagging on a folder at the time of upload and want to smart tag the after upload, then Enable Smart Tags from Asset Processing tab of the folder Properties and use Reprocess Asset option to add Smart Tags to the assets.

Enhancing content discovery with AI-Generated metadata ai-smart-tags

Instead of relying on manual input, AI automatically assigns descriptive tags to digital assets. These AI-generated tags enhance metadata quality, making the assets easier to search, categorize, and recommend. This approach not only improves efficiency by eliminating manual tagging but also ensures consistency and scalability across large volumes of digital content. For example, if the asset is an image, AI can identify objects, scenes, emotions, or even brand logos within it and generate relevant tags such as “sunset,” “beach,” “vacation,” or “smiling.” AI-generated content can enhance the search for assets by leveraging both semantic and lexical search techniques. See more Search Assets.

Enhanced smart tags

How to enable AI-generated metadata? enable-ai-generated-metadata

To enable AI-generated metadata:

  • Minimum required AEM release version is 20626.

  • You must sign a GenAI Rider agreement. For more information, contact your Adobe representative.

Configure AI-generated titles configure-ai-generated-titles

AEM enables you to configure the display of asset titles in Card view or List view on the Asset Browse page. You can choose to display the asset title defined by you, title generated using AI, or use AI-generated title only if there is no existing title for the asset.

To configure AI-generated titles:

  1. Navigate to Tools > Assets > Assets Configuration > Smart Tag Enhancement Configuration.

  2. Select one of the following options:

    • Display DC Title (Default): Specify the title in the Title field available in asset properties to display it in Card view or List view. If the asset title is not defined, AEM Assets displays the file name.

    • Display AI-Generated Title: Displays the AI-generated title and ignores the title specified in asset properties. If AI-generated title is not available for an asset, AEM Assets displays the default asset title available in its properties.

    • Display AI-Generated Title only if DC Title doesn’t exist: AEM Assets displays the AI-generated title only if asset title is not defined for an asset.

      Configure AI-generated titles

Using AI-Generated metadata using-ai-generated-smart-tags

To use the enhanced smart tags feature, execute the following steps:

  1. In the Experience Manager interface, go to the desired folder and click Add Assets. The compatible image file formats are png, jpg, jpeg,psd, tiff, gif, webp, crw, cr2, 3fr, nef, arw, and bmp.

  2. Wait until the newly uploaded asset is processed. Once done, go to asset properties.

  3. Go to AI-Generated tab. If Experience Manager version is incompatible or not updated, then this tab is not visible. The following fields are there:

    • Generated title: The title provides a clear and concise headline that captures the core idea of an uploaded asset, making it easy to understand at a glance. When adding an asset, if you provide a title (in dc:title), it will be displayed in the assets browse view. If left blank, an AI-generated title will be assigned automatically.
    • Generated description: The description gives a brief yet informative summary of what the asset is about, helping users and search module to quickly grasp its relevance.
    • Generated keywords: The keywords are targeted terms that represent the main themes of an asset, aiding in tagging and content filtering.

  4. [Optional] You may add additional tags or create your own if you feel any relevant tags are missing. To do this, write your tags in the Generated keywords field and click Save.

Disable AI-generated metadata disable-ai-generated-metadata

You can disable AI-generated metadata at the folder-level. All child folders inherit the properties from the parent folder.

To disable AI-generated metadata at the folder-level:

  1. Navigate to Adobe Experience Manager > Assets > Files.

  2. Select the folder and click Properties.

  3. In the Asset Processing tab, navigate to the Smart Tags Enhancements for images folder. Select one of the following values from the drop-down list:

    • Inherited - The folder inherits the enable or disable options from the parent folder.

    • Enable - Enables AI-generated metadata for the selected folder.

    • Disable - Disables AI-generated metadata for the selected folder.

      Disable AI-generated metadata

These models are not always perfect at identifying tags. The current version of the Smart Tags has the following limitations:

  • Inability to recognize subtle differences in images. For example, slim-fit versus regular-fit shirts.

  • Inability to identify tags based on tiny patterns or parts of an image. For example, logos on shirts.

  • The tags that are not handled relate to:

    • Non-visual, abstract aspects. For example, the year or season of release of a product, mood or emotion evoked by an image, and a subjective connotation of a video.
    • Fine visual differences in products such as shirts with and without collars or small product logos embedded on products.

  • Only the videos smaller than 300 MB in file size are auto-tagged. The Adobe Sensei service skips video files that are larger in size.

  • To search for files with Smart Tags (regular or enhanced), use the Assets search (full-text search). There is no separate search predicate for Smart Tags.

  • In comparison of general tags, the assets that are tagged using business taxonomy are easier to identify and retrieve by tag-based searches.

Frequently asked questions faq-smart-tags

How do Smart Tags improve search experience of an asset?
Adobe Sensei tags the assets automatically once you upload them. The automated process runs so fast at the backend that you will see tags added in your assets after a few seconds once the upload is completed.
What happens if the Smart Tags list is inaccurate or showing unwanted tag?
An inaccurate or unwanted tag can be removed from the list. For example, as an automobile dealer, you might want to remove “damaged” tag from the list.
How can you prioritize assets containing same tags?
Yes, you can prioritize assets containing the same tags. You can promote a tag into the Smart Tags list of an asset to perform prioritization. Promoting a tag allows you to prioritize the images appearing in the search results for that particular tag.
Is the application of Smart Tags limited to a particular folder?
Smart Tags are configurable and can be applied on any folder inside DAM.
How may I know that tagging needs training?
Refer to Determining the requirement of Smart Tags training.
What are the supported file formats for tagging an asset?
Refer to Supported file formats.
In which language smart tags are generated?
Smart tags are generated in English language only. They can be translated to other languages by translating the whole asset including metadata.
I do not want to use Smart Tagging anymore.
You can opt out Smart Tagging anytime you want to discontinue.
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