Hello guys,
I have created the free app PiccyBot that speaks out the description of the photo/image you give it. And you can then ask detailed questions about it.
I have adjusted the app to make it as low vision friendly as I could, but I would love to receive feedback on how to improve it further!
The App Store link can be found here:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/piccybot/id6476859317
I am really hoping it will be of use to some. I have earlier created the app 'Talking Goggles' which was well received by the low vision community, but PiccyBot is a lot more powerful and hopefully useful!
Thanks and best regards,
Martijn van der Spek
Comments
@the dev
I can't seam to play the audio atached to my mail when sharing with piccybot, is that a bug or just a me thing?
I'm using vlc to play it if that helps.
The AI moddles.
I think that a little description for each moddle would be nice, why would I want to use moddle x over y?
If that's already in the question mark thing on the top left, at least that's how it is for a blind user, great! I just thought i'd throw it out there.
The more I listen to AIs right, the more there's a pattern, at the moment I'd not say they right like a human does, I really do wonder where we'll be with that this time next year.
Oh my goodness Brad, that is fantastic isn't it!
As I said, I don't use the app. That description was totally amazing!
It was!
Now, it's not for me, but once they manage to sink the description with the audio/visuals of the video, if that's possible, then it will be great and if they make an addon for firefox, I'll pay for it straight away.
If possible I'd like more voices but that can be added later if at all.
Please focus on the video side of things and syncing audio and video together if you can.
@brad
I love the amount of description you get, I think it's great. I want a picture painted in my head and the more info it gives, the better IMO. I was also born blind so I think this is a very subjective thing.
As for an audio description like experience, I think that'd be crazy difficult to immplilment. You'd have to have it understand the contexts of the video to put description in the right places somehow and that's going to require a lot of work on Martijn's end, if it's even possible at all.
Love the idea of a donate button on the app as well.
@Brad So what do you use the app for?
Thank you, but what do you use the app for then if not descriptions? Maybe I'm thick here, but I'm not getting what the benefit of this app is? Just trying to understand.
Subjectivity.
I guess the amount of details that one prefers in a description is entirely a subjective thing; I am born blind, and prefer rich, detailed descriptions with a detailing of the colors, tone etc almost 70% of the times. It's only when dealing with work-related data or something that I prefer a concise approach. But maybe a setting to determine what kind of description one needs might be nice.
Born blind here as well
I was born blind and I am loving the detailed descriptions this and every app gives. I think it is a person to person preference. I am going to test this app on youtube on some shorts, this is a great app!
Oh it totally is a preference thing.
@gaybearUK, I don't really use the app.
I try it, find a feature to be neet and then delete it.
@inforover oh it would be really hard to do,, I don't think we're there yet, but I do think we'll get there one day and it won't be far off.
Sharing from dropbox broken?
After updating to the latest version, now when I try to share a photo from dropbox, no matter via "share" or "export" piccy shows "fetching data" and then "please wait" and then sits there forever doing nothing like it's frozen.
Add Indian regional languages for recognising images
Hello developer, this is Kaushik from India. Your apps. Accuracy is very good, but we need this app to recognise Indian regional languages so that we can use seamlessly and try to bring in the feature to read PDFs and other book formats with the best affordable rate for everybody now recently in India, iPhone purchasing has been increased by our visually impaired community. Do consider this. Thank you.
Dropbox and regional languages
Kaushik, at the moment PiccyBot supports the Indian languages Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Marathi, Punjabi and Sindhi. Will add further languages in due time, when usage from those regions goes up.
Privateai, I released an update today that should fix the dropbox and whatsapp sharing issue. Hope it all works ok again!
Regional languages
@Martijn. do consider adding a couple of South Indian languages if you are at it because I know for a fact that there are a reasonable number of users from these parts to make the effort worthwhile.
Sharing images from email
Sorry if I've missed this, but is sharing an image from email broken?
I'm using ios 18.0.1 and I share to the pixies and it makes the waiting noise but never seems to get past it. I ended up using Be My AI which worked OK but the descriptions weren't as verbose as I get with this app.
(By the way, I hope the dev doesn't find it annoying that I always refer to this app as the pixies. By the time I realised it wasn't called Pixie Bot it was already cemented in my brain as that. And I kinda like that it has a pet name. And given my username I can say it's definitely not meant as demeaning or anything like that.)
It's like having your very own Dev Shop
The way this app is improved, almost on request, is so very impressive!
It really is.
If we get that donate button i'll use it.
I can't imagine where this will be this time next year, or the amazing stuf to come out by then, I can't wait!
re: Dropbox and regional languages
Thanks for fixing it :) I store most of my photos in dropbox so I was sad not being able to use it :)
Thoughts
I want to start by saying I really love this app and the fact that it can describe videos. It’s an incredible feature, and I find it super useful. However, I do have some feedback that I think could make it even better.
Right now, the limitation is that the app can only describe 60 seconds of video, which is about one minute. I understand the challenges behind processing videos for descriptions, especially when the app needs to download and handle the video on the device. However, I wonder if there could be a way to work around this. For example, what if we could watch videos directly from platforms like YouTube, and somehow screen-share or sync it with the app to receive real-time descriptions?
As a blind person, I really appreciate being told what’s happening in a video, but it’s hard to know how frequently scenes are changing or what exactly is going on during more dynamic content. It would be great to have a way to know the timestamps for when events happen and how often things change from one scene to the next.
Another issue I’ve come across is that, to my knowledge, we currently can’t mute a video on YouTube and still have it described. I think it would be incredibly helpful if we could mute the original audio on videos, particularly for things like music videos, and have the app provide the description instead. This way, I could choose to listen to the video’s audio when I want, but also have the option to mute it and have the app describe the visual content for me.
I hope this feedback is helpful and that it’s something that can be looked into in the future. Thanks so much for all the hard work that’s gone into this app—I really appreciate it.
Email pt 2
I tried opening up the same image from my email later on and it worked fine, so must have been just a temporary glitch. Sorry, was a bit trigger happy with my post yesterday.
Increased video duration and Reddit support
Thanks for the feedback guys! Winter Roses, I will increase the length of the video that can be processed. Already did it for the Android version, the next iOS release will have at least double the duration for pro users.
I have also added support for the sharing of Reddit videos, there were quite a few requests for that. If any of you have any suggestions for more specific video sources that will be helpful to describe, let me know..
Text length in chat
Not sure if it's set this way, but when I use the ask more feature, the responses are rather short. I prefer this app's long and detailed descriptions, and would like it if we can get similar length on chat- according to our setting preferences. Also, sometimes on long descriptions the text cuts out before getting to the end. Is there a way to put in a "continue" button or something to prompt it to finish from where it left off? From experience using chat AIs I know often all you have to do is type "continue" into the prompt, but when I did that pixxy simply re-analyse the photo and generated a new description rather than continuing the previous thought.
I had a halarious moment…
I had a halarious moment with this app. I took a selfee and I do have a lot of skin tags and it said "That man must be in a lot of pain and discomfort with those skin liesions lol.