SOOT, the visual intelligence platform building tools for creative exploration, has unveiled Spiral, an image search engine designed to make searching feel more like exploring. Built for creatives, researchers and anyone working visually, it turns a single prompt into a layered moodboard within seconds. The goal is simple: to surface links between images that go beyond tags or keywords and make it easier to follow curiosity where it leads.
Better yet, rather than simply presenting images in a flat grid, Spiral arranges hundreds of visuals within a curved interface that reveals patterns, timelines and aesthetic relationships in one view. Searching something like ‘the evolution of Tokyo street fashion from 1980 to now’ doesn’t just return pictures tagged with those words. Instead, Spiral maps subcultures, materials and influences to create a wider visual story. Founder and CEO Jake Harper explains that they “realised the problem wasn’t just the algorithm – it was the geometry itself”. By curving the interface into a spiral, users can see hundreds of images at once, creating what SOOT calls “heat maps of relationships” that encourage discovery rather than ranking.