5 ms·

OCR is not AI

by epigramx 11mo ago

OCR is not AI

radarsat1 11mo ago
God of the gaps
MathMonkeyMan 11mo ago
Yes but they're quite good at it. Reliable OCR is font dependent, whereas I think a lot of models just kind of figure it out regardless.
- paulmooreparks 11mo ago
  One reason I don't quite trust AI for OCR is that it will, on occasion, hallucinate the output.
  - ssl-3 11mo ago
    All OCR is untrustworthy. But sometimes, OCR is useful. (And I've heard it said that all LLM output is a hallucination; the good outputs are just hallucinations that fit.) A few months ago a warehouse manager sent us a list of serial numbers and the model numbers of some gear they were using -- with both fields being alphanumeric. This list was hand-written on notebook paper, in pencil. It was photographed with a digital camera under bad lighting, and that photograph was then emailed. The writing was barely legible. It was hard to parse. It was awful. It made my boss's brain hurt trying to work with it, and then he gave it to me and it made my brain hurt too. If I had to read this person's writing every day I would have gotten used to it eventually, but in all likelihood I'll never read something this person has written ever again. I didn't want to train myself for that and I didn't have enough of a sampleset to train with, anyway. And if it were part of a high-school assignment it would have been sent back with a note at the top that said "Unreadable -- try again." But it wasn't a high school student, and I wasn't their teacher. They were a paying customer and this list was worth real money to us. I shoved it into ChatGPT and it produced output that was neatly formatted into a table just as I specified with my minimal instruction ("Read this. Make a table."). The quality was sufficient to allow us to fairly quickly compare the original scribbles to the OCR output, make some manual corrections that we humans knew how to do (like "6" was sometimes transposed with "G"), and get a result that worked for what we needed to accomplish without additional pain. 0/10. I'm glad it worked and I hope I never have to do that again, but will repeat if I must.
  - number6 11mo ago
    There was a good talk some years ago at some of the CCC events where some guy found out that scanners sometimes change numbers on forms.
    - kiliankoe 11mo ago
      It's David Kriesel's infamous talk about the even more infamous Xerox bug. Talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282300_-_traue_keinem_scan_den_du_nicht_selbst_gefalscht_hast_-_david_kriesel https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282... Bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Character_substitution_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Character_substitution_b...
pylotlight 11mo ago
But AI can OCR
- number6 11mo ago
  That's a thing I always marvel about - how LLMs are so versatile and do so much stuff so good that was out of reach just some years ago
  - docmars 11mo ago
    Especially when you consider how expensive "good" OCR software is
- simianparrot 11mo ago
  They do so by running the image through an OCR tool call
  - stavros 11mo ago
    No they don't, they natively "see" images.
  - dpoloncsak 11mo ago
    They can, sure...that's really just LLMs though. ML models to recognize handwriting have existed way before LLMs could call tools, though Identifying digits is like the "Hello World!" of ML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk
    - simianparrot 11mo ago
      An OCR tool is ML. AI is generally used to mean LLM’s. You’re repeating what I already wrote
1gn15 11mo ago
AI is whatever hasn't been done yet. — Larry Tesler, 1970 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
9rx 11mo ago
AI says that OCR is AI.
ponector 11mo ago
On apple platforms it definitely is an AI. Apple intelligence!

OCR is not AI

God of the gaps

Yes but they're quite good at it. Reliable OCR is font dependent, whereas I think a lot of models just kind of figure it out regardless.

paulmooreparks 11mo ago
One reason I don't quite trust AI for OCR is that it will, on occasion, hallucinate the output.
- ssl-3 11mo ago
  All OCR is untrustworthy. But sometimes, OCR is useful. (And I've heard it said that all LLM output is a hallucination; the good outputs are just hallucinations that fit.) A few months ago a warehouse manager sent us a list of serial numbers and the model numbers of some gear they were using -- with both fields being alphanumeric. This list was hand-written on notebook paper, in pencil. It was photographed with a digital camera under bad lighting, and that photograph was then emailed. The writing was barely legible. It was hard to parse. It was awful. It made my boss's brain hurt trying to work with it, and then he gave it to me and it made my brain hurt too. If I had to read this person's writing every day I would have gotten used to it eventually, but in all likelihood I'll never read something this person has written ever again. I didn't want to train myself for that and I didn't have enough of a sampleset to train with, anyway. And if it were part of a high-school assignment it would have been sent back with a note at the top that said "Unreadable -- try again." But it wasn't a high school student, and I wasn't their teacher. They were a paying customer and this list was worth real money to us. I shoved it into ChatGPT and it produced output that was neatly formatted into a table just as I specified with my minimal instruction ("Read this. Make a table."). The quality was sufficient to allow us to fairly quickly compare the original scribbles to the OCR output, make some manual corrections that we humans knew how to do (like "6" was sometimes transposed with "G"), and get a result that worked for what we needed to accomplish without additional pain. 0/10. I'm glad it worked and I hope I never have to do that again, but will repeat if I must.
- number6 11mo ago
  There was a good talk some years ago at some of the CCC events where some guy found out that scanners sometimes change numbers on forms.
  - kiliankoe 11mo ago
    It's David Kriesel's infamous talk about the even more infamous Xerox bug. Talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282300_-_traue_keinem_scan_den_du_nicht_selbst_gefalscht_hast_-_david_kriesel https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6558_-_de_-_saal_g_-_201412282... Bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Character_substitution_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Character_substitution_b...

pylotlight 11mo ago

But AI can OCR

number6 11mo ago
That's a thing I always marvel about - how LLMs are so versatile and do so much stuff so good that was out of reach just some years ago
- docmars 11mo ago
  Especially when you consider how expensive "good" OCR software is
simianparrot 11mo ago
They do so by running the image through an OCR tool call
- stavros 11mo ago
  No they don't, they natively "see" images.
- dpoloncsak 11mo ago
  They can, sure...that's really just LLMs though. ML models to recognize handwriting have existed way before LLMs could call tools, though Identifying digits is like the "Hello World!" of ML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk
  - simianparrot 11mo ago
    An OCR tool is ML. AI is generally used to mean LLM’s. You’re repeating what I already wrote

1gn15 11mo ago

AI is whatever hasn't been done yet. — Larry Tesler, 1970 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

9rx 11mo ago

AI says that OCR is AI.

ponector 11mo ago

On apple platforms it definitely is an AI. Apple intelligence!