The present invention relates to an artificial intelligence (AI), which emulates functions of a human brain, such as recognition and reasoning, by utilizing a machine learning algorithm such as deep learning, and relates to context awareness based artificial intelligence application technology for obtaining interest information of a user from an image displayed to the user. An electronic device, according to one embodiment of the present invention acquires context data related to the image, and uses the context data to select a node of interest corresponding to the context data from among nodes of an index tree for searching for sample images which correspond to candidate objects extracted from the image by using a model generated as a result of machine learning, wherein the node of interest is selected by using a result of comparison between a subject of each node of the index tree and the context data; and an object of interest is selected from among the candidate objects included in the image by using the node of interest.