Abstract: Systems and methods for image searching are described. The systems and methods include receiving a search query comprising user input for a reference image; converting the user input for the reference image to a preference statement using a machine learning model; encoding the preference statement in an embedding space to obtain an encoded preference statement; combining the encoded preference statement with an encoded reference image representing the reference image in the embedding space to obtain a multi-modal search encoding; and performing a search operation using the multi-modal search encoding to retrieve a second image, wherein the second image differs from the reference image based on the user input for the reference image.