5 ms·

I’m impressed, technically, but this seems niche. Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? That’s weird. If you don’t

I’m impressed, technically, but this seems niche. Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? That’s weird. If you don’t know what it is, wtf did you take photo? The obvious use here is natural language improvement / photo editing for photos, but this is just a stepping stone to that, and bluntly, as it stands… the examples really don’t shine… Great for the vision impaired. …not sure, what anyone else will use this for. The only really compelling use case is the “code this ui for me”, but as we’ve seen, repeatedly, this kind of code generation only works for trivial meaningless examples. Seems fun, but I doubt I’d use it. (Which, and this is my point, is a massive step away from the current everyday usefulness of chatgpt)

otoburb 3y ago
>>Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? >>Great for the vision impaired. Yes, this is great for the estimated 285 million vision impaired people around the world[1]. [1] https://www.bemyeyes.com/about https://www.bemyeyes.com/about
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Did you read my comment? I literally said that it’s for vision impaired. That’s great. …but it’s niche. I’m sitting on my couch right now and I can think of like 20 things I could chat to chatgpt about. I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. It’s like Shazam. Yes, it’s useful, but, most of the time, I don’t need it. I would argue this is true for this, for most people, including the significant proportion of people with minor visual impairments (that would, you know, put their glasses on instead).
  - Philpax 3y ago
    baffling that you think 3.5% of the world's population is a niche
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    There's enough vision-impaired people in the world to equal the population of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam combined. And beyond those people who would get obvious utility, this is essentially Google Lens on steroids—I simply can't figure how you could call this "niche". Maybe you won't use it multiple times per day, but plenty of people will. Hell, just now I was wondering why the leaves on one of my plants are starting to brown and could have used this.
    - wokwokwok 3y ago
      Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. This, wouldn't help them, even if they had both a device capable of using it and the means to pay for it. Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. What I am talking about is this actual service.
      - famouswaffles 3y ago
        >What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. It's not a speculative service that might one day happen. Literally it's rolling out right now https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai
      - bastawhiz 3y ago
        > Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. These people are being served by a preview of the service _right now_. > Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. Any OCR solution could also make a mistake, like misrecognizing a dosage on a prescription label. > What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. > What I am talking about is this actual service. GPT-4 is six months old. ChatGPT is less than a year old. Why would you benchmark a service by the initial public preview? Of course it's _speculative use_, the damn thing has had its tires kicked for like a day.
  - epups 3y ago
    You are thinking too small here. Think about a system that could provide you with sophisticated image analysis to the level of a human expert. Tumor identification, quality control, etc. I don't think we are there quite yet, but this is clear and fast progress on that field.
  - digging 3y ago
    > I’m sitting on my couch right now and ... I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. What if you weren't on your couch? Going outside is not "niche".
ryandr 3y ago
One application can be objects recognition in security camera
BoxFour 3y ago
> who takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? I find myself doing this rather frequently. The scenario described in the article is quite common for me: capturing a photo of a plant and utilizing an existing classification service to determine its identity. It could be driven by mere curiosity or practical concerns like identifying whether a plant is poison ivy. Wildlife identification also falls into this category. Recognizing different bird species can be challenging, especially when it's not a familiar species like a blue jay. I often find myself engaging in this activity quite regularly! EDIT: I should also point out this happens with other forms of ‘unknown object identification’. There’s an entire subreddit that’s quite popular devoted to just crowd-sourcing identification based on a picture.
- joshuahedlund 3y ago
  > Recognizing different bird species can be challenging, especially when it's not a familiar species like a blue jay. FYI Cornell Lab's Merlin app is fantastic at this, and its bird call audio identification is even better. They obviously have some top-notch machine learning going on there, and I'm really curious to see how both they and other services innovate on this front in the months to come.
- ldhough 3y ago
  > Wildlife identification Wouldn't say this is super reliable, I gave it a photo of a small squid in my hand and it said it was a baby fish (very obviously was not a fish).
yieldcrv 3y ago
> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? That’s weird. If you don’t know what it is, wtf did you take photo? OpenAI’s example included bike repair and toolkit choice Allot of people could use this even if they aren’t right now
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll use YouTube, just like they do right now. Maybe if it could watch the video, then step you through it step by step. …but it cant, with what they’ve actually released here. Oh whatever. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Time will tell.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    the best case scenario is a 30 second youtube video with an ad that lasts 15 seconds followed by a 2 minute ad that I can skip in 5 more seconds and ad block doesn't work on mobile if you have a case that wasn't covered by that video? you have to go to another or continue searching all while wishing you could just talk to someone about it. if you don't know the word for what you're looking for, all the search engines lack utility. ChatGPT4 with image recognition and conversation solves all of that use case and people already use it, so now they'll just start sending it pictures from the phone already in their hand that they're already using to chat with there are plenty of times over the last year that would have been useful for me. plenty of times over the last year I just didn't continue being interested in that problem it just seems kind of…. late ?… for that “dont be ridiculous” reaction. classic dropbox moment
jack_riminton 3y ago
I'm bookmarking this and filing it alongside the infamous hacker news dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  After all, an agent that is able to see, listen and communicate with a user with a superintelligent grasp of the world's information. Niche at best!
pol9000 3y ago
it's still a good PoC for robots?
troupo 3y ago
> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? I do. For plants, and occasionally for birds.
Maken 3y ago
This is mostly useless. Essentially a toy. I am not that much hyped by AI tools either, but come on. This is clearly the future of human-computer interaction. This is likely how we'll communicate with information systems: throw some hand-wavy question at it, and refine your query based on its output using natural language until you find the answer (or even the question) you were looking for.
pwython 3y ago
> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? There are several popular "r/whatisthis(x)" subreddits: whatisthisthing, whatisthisbug, whatisthisplant, whatisthissnake, whatisthisrock, etc. And there are many phone apps that attempt to do the same thing, like CoinSnap to identify coins.
T-A 3y ago
in 2017 we introduced Lens, so you can search what you see using your camera or an image. Now, the age of visual search is here — in fact, people use Lens to answer 8 billion questions every month. [1] https://blog.google/products/search/new-search-technology/ https://blog.google/products/search/new-search-technology/
blovescoffee 3y ago
Image understanding -> scene understanding -> world understanding -> intelligence
sexy_seedbox 3y ago
> If you don’t know what it is, wtf did you take photo? Currently traveling in foreign country, this is exactly my use case seeing weird flowers and fruits I've never seen before.

otoburb 3y ago

>>Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? >>Great for the vision impaired. Yes, this is great for the estimated 285 million vision impaired people around the world[1]. [1] https://www.bemyeyes.com/about https://www.bemyeyes.com/about

wokwokwok 3y ago
Did you read my comment? I literally said that it’s for vision impaired. That’s great. …but it’s niche. I’m sitting on my couch right now and I can think of like 20 things I could chat to chatgpt about. I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. It’s like Shazam. Yes, it’s useful, but, most of the time, I don’t need it. I would argue this is true for this, for most people, including the significant proportion of people with minor visual impairments (that would, you know, put their glasses on instead).
- Philpax 3y ago
  baffling that you think 3.5% of the world's population is a niche
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  There's enough vision-impaired people in the world to equal the population of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam combined. And beyond those people who would get obvious utility, this is essentially Google Lens on steroids—I simply can't figure how you could call this "niche". Maybe you won't use it multiple times per day, but plenty of people will. Hell, just now I was wondering why the leaves on one of my plants are starting to brown and could have used this.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. This, wouldn't help them, even if they had both a device capable of using it and the means to pay for it. Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. What I am talking about is this actual service.
    - famouswaffles 3y ago
      >What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. It's not a speculative service that might one day happen. Literally it's rolling out right now https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai
    - bastawhiz 3y ago
      > Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. These people are being served by a preview of the service _right now_. > Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. Any OCR solution could also make a mistake, like misrecognizing a dosage on a prescription label. > What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. > What I am talking about is this actual service. GPT-4 is six months old. ChatGPT is less than a year old. Why would you benchmark a service by the initial public preview? Of course it's _speculative use_, the damn thing has had its tires kicked for like a day.
- epups 3y ago
  You are thinking too small here. Think about a system that could provide you with sophisticated image analysis to the level of a human expert. Tumor identification, quality control, etc. I don't think we are there quite yet, but this is clear and fast progress on that field.
- digging 3y ago
  > I’m sitting on my couch right now and ... I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. What if you weren't on your couch? Going outside is not "niche".

ryandr 3y ago

One application can be objects recognition in security camera

BoxFour 3y ago

> who takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? I find myself doing this rather frequently. The scenario described in the article is quite common for me: capturing a photo of a plant and utilizing an existing classification service to determine its identity. It could be driven by mere curiosity or practical concerns like identifying whether a plant is poison ivy. Wildlife identification also falls into this category. Recognizing different bird species can be challenging, especially when it's not a familiar species like a blue jay. I often find myself engaging in this activity quite regularly! EDIT: I should also point out this happens with other forms of ‘unknown object identification’. There’s an entire subreddit that’s quite popular devoted to just crowd-sourcing identification based on a picture.

joshuahedlund 3y ago
> Recognizing different bird species can be challenging, especially when it's not a familiar species like a blue jay. FYI Cornell Lab's Merlin app is fantastic at this, and its bird call audio identification is even better. They obviously have some top-notch machine learning going on there, and I'm really curious to see how both they and other services innovate on this front in the months to come.
ldhough 3y ago
> Wildlife identification Wouldn't say this is super reliable, I gave it a photo of a small squid in my hand and it said it was a baby fish (very obviously was not a fish).

yieldcrv 3y ago

> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? That’s weird. If you don’t know what it is, wtf did you take photo? OpenAI’s example included bike repair and toolkit choice Allot of people could use this even if they aren’t right now

wokwokwok 3y ago
Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll use YouTube, just like they do right now. Maybe if it could watch the video, then step you through it step by step. …but it cant, with what they’ve actually released here. Oh whatever. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Time will tell.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  the best case scenario is a 30 second youtube video with an ad that lasts 15 seconds followed by a 2 minute ad that I can skip in 5 more seconds and ad block doesn't work on mobile if you have a case that wasn't covered by that video? you have to go to another or continue searching all while wishing you could just talk to someone about it. if you don't know the word for what you're looking for, all the search engines lack utility. ChatGPT4 with image recognition and conversation solves all of that use case and people already use it, so now they'll just start sending it pictures from the phone already in their hand that they're already using to chat with there are plenty of times over the last year that would have been useful for me. plenty of times over the last year I just didn't continue being interested in that problem it just seems kind of…. late ?… for that “dont be ridiculous” reaction. classic dropbox moment

jack_riminton 3y ago

I'm bookmarking this and filing it alongside the infamous hacker news dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

jack_riminton 3y ago
After all, an agent that is able to see, listen and communicate with a user with a superintelligent grasp of the world's information. Niche at best!

pol9000 3y ago

it's still a good PoC for robots?

troupo 3y ago

> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? I do. For plants, and occasionally for birds.

Maken 3y ago

This is mostly useless. Essentially a toy. I am not that much hyped by AI tools either, but come on. This is clearly the future of human-computer interaction. This is likely how we'll communicate with information systems: throw some hand-wavy question at it, and refine your query based on its output using natural language until you find the answer (or even the question) you were looking for.

pwython 3y ago

> Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? There are several popular "r/whatisthis(x)" subreddits: whatisthisthing, whatisthisbug, whatisthisplant, whatisthissnake, whatisthisrock, etc. And there are many phone apps that attempt to do the same thing, like CoinSnap to identify coins.

T-A 3y ago

in 2017 we introduced Lens, so you can search what you see using your camera or an image. Now, the age of visual search is here — in fact, people use Lens to answer 8 billion questions every month. [1] https://blog.google/products/search/new-search-technology/ https://blog.google/products/search/new-search-technology/

blovescoffee 3y ago

Image understanding -> scene understanding -> world understanding -> intelligence

sexy_seedbox 3y ago

> If you don’t know what it is, wtf did you take photo? Currently traveling in foreign country, this is exactly my use case seeing weird flowers and fruits I've never seen before.