Media unit retrieval and related processes

Methods of retrieving media drives, systems, and software products are provided that allow a user to search for an item by iteratively presenting media drives such as images representing items to the user and receiving user input consisting of user selections of the items. media drives presented (possibly including the empty selection). Features or attributes that a user is interested in, e.g. semantic features, are inferred from user interaction, and media units are retrieved for display based on similarity to user-selected media units, by sampling from a probability distribution that describes the intent or intent of the user. interests, or a combination of these approaches. In this way, the user experience is similar to a conversation about what the user is looking for. The recovery can be based on both selected and unselected media drives and the selection can include a single action selection by the user. A media drive database that captures similarity relationships is also provided for efficient media drive retrieval.</p> <p>(Automatic translation using Google Translate, no legal value)