New AI app for describing images and video: PiccyBot

Hi Olly,
Yes, real time would be the best solution. The closest we'll get is video with Be My AI and Copilot on Windows at the moment. PiccyBot is still a nice app though.

My last post I mentioned the prompt history appears to be missing. I finally found it LOL. It used to be you just swipe right, past the text field, and they'd show up there. Now you have to tap on the keyboard and then they appear above the keyboard. I still think a proper set of "pre programmed" prompts you can add, remove, select from would be better. This works but because it only stores so many, I find myself scared to try new questions or prompts cause it'll bump off the "tested and true" ones. Also when I restart my phone all my prompt history goes bye-bye. It's no big deal since I got my favorite prompts in a text thread to myself so I just copy and paste them in, but still a bit of a drag.

PiccyBot has been installed on my device for quite a while, but only yesterday have I actually started using it as I was interested in getting videos described. I did go through the whole thread from the very first post to the very last one though, and one thing I notice is how responsive the developer is. I appreciate that and hope the app gets better, but would like to touch upon some points, several of which have already been mentioned by others:

• While I can share photos with PiccyBot from the Photos app or elsewhere, this is not the case for videos.
• There should be an option to toggle whether audio feedback is switched on or off depending on the status of the ringer switch.
• Personality should be disabled by default (in the free version), as this is something impacts the app's usability and basic functionality rather than what may be called convenience or extra features, some of which might even be redundant to some. The remarks that the voice makes don't often make sense at all, and it is not really preferable to wait for it to finish speaking so that one can then listen to the text description.
• Can free users not have the option to watch ads and get access to some paid features?
• I presume one can ask only one follow-up question per description in the free version, and would like to ask whether this is also the case for the paid version.
• The app should have better localization support. I can confirm that this is definitely true for Turkish, my mother tongue.
• Finally, I would like to know how exactly our data and images are handled.

"I presume one can ask only one follow-up question per description in the free version, and would like to ask whether this is also the case for the paid version."
In the paid version you seem to have unlimited questions you can ask- at least, I haven't hit a limit yet and I am very chatty with Piccybot LOL.

Still, it could be better if we could at least ask multiple questions in the free version while using GPT, as in Be My Eyes.

Call me MM as Martin seems to be a popular name on this thread.
Heard about this on Double Tap and what interested me was the video description.
After reading the comments you may have answered the question.
The video I played is 46 seconds long. It's of me and a girl walking through lots of people clapping.
It described this very well.
The next video is 2.5 minutes long.
It only described the outside of the building, the shop and what two people were doing.
It did not tell me about the people in the corridors, offices and especially more importantly me laughing on the telephone.
This is a video from my last place of work and I would loved to have had it all described to me.
My question: is this all it is capable of describing or will it get better in the future?
I must say in the first video it described the girl I was with better than any human being had done!!!
Brilliant work Devs
MM

So I might actually consider upgrading to the paid version as it may be great to be able to make use of various AI models and use GPT-4o without any third party like Be My Eyes in the middle to store and process my data. Thing is, will PiccyBot eventually let us get complete descriptions for videos longer than 30 seconds? Also, will we be able to get real-time/live descriptions, and can we or will we be able to use LLM's other than GPT-4o to get video descriptions or is it only GPT-4o that can provide video descriptions? By the way, I am not sure we both got one another right. Does the mute switch currently control audio feedback? What I suggested is an option to toggle whether it does or not; not whether audio feedback is on or off. Finally, I can help with improving the Turkish translation.

I think this ap is great. The personality stuff is excellent for novelty value but the factual descriptions are superb. One question I had though: if I save images back to my album with the descriptions attached, the only disadvantage is I lose the dates and times of the photos. That's unfortunate as what I quite like about Apple Photos is the date, time, location information. Losing the original date disarranges them a bit. I don’t suppose there’s a solution to this one, is there?

On video descriptions, I’ve found I’ve got a longer and better description by asking a different question: "Describe the visual details of the video from beginning to end, for the benefit of a blind person, in 1000 words." Or, of course you could have it shorter if you wanted. It seems to do considerably better with that. I ran a video Mrs Bingo and I took of our new house, circa 6 minutes long, and although the AI reported Bingo saying things he certainly did not say (the archway is 14ft wide", "The architecture is genuine Regency" etc. it got the gist of it. I have to say I did not appreciate some of the included implied criticisms—short, scruffy beard, there is a lot of clutter around, the man is mumbling so we can't hear what he’s saying. Still, it was the whole video…sort of.

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Two things I'm wondering about: Does the flashlight turn on automatically? I'm not clear about that because with other apps I've used, the flashlight doesn't show up at all, and I just take the pic. Second, I don't see a way to clear the picture. For now I'm using the free version, but chances are pretty good I'll subscribe so I can play with the other voices and personalities.

@Bingo Little - that was a great suggestion, thank you.

And for some reason I'd never really picked up on the microphone so wasn't really asking any follow-up questions. (Yes the tiny amount of effort to edit the text did put me off, pathetic though that is)

Yesterday I was watching a video, then used the microphone to correct some details (gender, names etc). When I played it back I was in buckets as it was such a bittersweet memory. It's not the same as being able to see them but considering just a short time ago photos and videos on my phone were just useless files taking up space and now they are memories again. It's astonishing how far we have come in such a short space of time.

I love this app, and I am still gobsmacked that a video feature was added to it - it is incredible, thank you so much.

I love this idea, but less so if I end up with two lots of everything. For some reason when I originally tried the Save Picture option under Share I thought it was updating the original image to add the meta data. So I did it for a couple of pictures, then stopped because I wasn't confident enough about going back and deleting the photos that I had already done, even though it's fairly obvious if you are doing them one at a time.

I'm never really sure how to do batch things in the Photos app. Probably if I could get my head around the Mac Photos app it might be better but I always got totally lost there.

I guess ideally I just want a load of photos that I can browse without needing to pass them off individually. So for me personally I would even accept a different app where it had its own index of my photos with the descriptions against them and I could just browse that way.

But maintaining the date/time would be important. I think if Pixie Batch worked exactly the same way as Pixie Bot I probably wouldn't use it but that might just be out of laziness and a lack of confidence that I'm not going to delete things by mistake.

I downloaded this app and tried to run a short video through it. Immediately after getting the result, I bought the lifetime subscription. Haven't changed any settings, yet. Wow! This app will certainly get used a lot. Thanks for this exciting way to kill spare time! GREAT APP!

Hello, I am very happy to see this post here, but I have been using this App for a month. I discovered several problems during use. First of all, I'm using Simplified Chinese and I found that the voice used to describe the pictures sounded very strange, with a weird accent. Secondly, when using VoiceOver to read the displayed description content, I often feel that the information is incomplete, that is, the description is gone before it is finished. Third, it takes a very long time to wait for results to be returned after uploading images. I'm using the free version now and I'd like to know if a few of the issues I mentioned can be solved if I pay. I'd be more than willing to pay for lifetime use if I could. Finally, thank you for developing the function of video description. This is really amazing. Although video description is not perfect yet, I believe this is a great start.

I completely missed your comment in reply to mine. apologies for that; but I am curious - about what have we disagreed previously? or have you kept your disagreement with me unspoken? either way, I'm glad I kept trying and didn't give up. Finally, I have made an observation to your liking! First of many, perhaps - that's a cracking Devonian beer, by the way.

I think PiccyBatch in principle is a fabulous concept. I wouldn't want two copies of all my images, though. When I think of the thousands and thousands of photos that I have accumulated over the years - think of Whatsapp chats, for example, where folk are forever exchanging pictures - it just depresses me. I did try and organise my photo library a year or so ago, deleting videos I did not want. It took about a century, but I got there. I had a look yesterday and, like weeds on Bingo's new lawn, surplus videos have made a comeback.

Decided to check this app out (have been reluctant due to too many apps already). I guess this has been answered somewhere in this thread already, but it is a bit much to read through so I would appreciate if someone could give me a quick answer.
Are all settings hidden behind the subscription, because I don't see a settings button anywhere? Also, when I have taken a picture in the free version and gotten the description, how do I start a new conversation? Is that even possible without closing the app?
I will probably buy the lifetime subscription anyway since it is not that much, but I want to know if I have understood things first or if I'm just a bit stupid here.

So after a bit of digging I found out that yes, all settings are hidden in the free version, so I bought the Premium one, but I still have questions/bugs:
* How do I clear the current conversation to start a new?
* I read in one post that there is supposed to be some kind of feedback from VoiceOver if you hold the camera straight or not when taking a photo (I guess like in the Camera app), but I don't hear anything of the sort.
* When I try to get an image (from Twitter) described via the share sheet, the app opens but nothing watsoever happens.

Except these things I think this is a really nice app. The ability to choose models, the volume button shortcut to take a photo and video descriptions sets this one apart.

When I try to share a photo via the share sheet to the app, it ow puts me in a window with an edit field and a "post" button with no additional info as to what I am "posting" about. I tried to type in something random and hit "post" then it just sits there doing nothing.

"What models and voices are available? Is it worth it?"
IMO it's totally worth it because it is constantly being improved and is already a very cool APP, even with what little bugs there are :)
Off the top of my head, there's 5 voices to pick from, personality versus no personality settings, and as for models, there's gemini, GPT4O, Lama3, Reca, Claude Haiku, and Claude Sonnett. It used to hve Claude Oppus which was my favorite, but that got buggy and got taken off for now I think.

First of all, I want to thank the developer of this app for all of their hard work. It is very much appreciated. I bought this app a few months ago, but have only recently started playing around with it. I am loving the various personalities and how they describe pictures. I'm not sure, but I think the current version has a bug. In settings, I can't find the place to change which AI model is being used. It used to be that I could double tap on the ai model button and a list would appear. Now, if I t ap on that button, it says selected, and if I tap it again, selected goes away, but unless I'm missing something, a list of ai models is no longer available. I've chosen for the picture descriptions to be as long as possible, and have heard some really great descriptions of some of my old pictures. I'm not overly keen on any of the voices currently available; the Envision Assistant beta has tons of voice options available, but since that app is currently in beta, it's very, very buggy. I'm going to continue discovering pictures from my photos app with Piccie bot, but I look forward to maybe eventually getting more voices and figuring out how to change the ai models again.

Do you think one day we'll get to share youtube videos?

...but can someone please answer these two questions?
* Is there any way to "clear" a conversation except restarting the app?
* Is there supposed to be some kind of VoiceOver feedback in the camera view or have I misunderstood something?

Someone on here mentioned a few comments back that they produced a slideshow and imported it (as a video) to PiccyBot. Simple question; how did that person do that? I can't find any way in the photos app that allows me to save a slideshow I have created. slightly off-topic I know but I've asked elsewhere and it didn't seem to register.

I have to say that since installing this app I have loved saving pictures with the descriptions alongside. I hope we will get the batch processing idea off the ground one day. I've got thousands of photos which I would love to receive the PiccyBot treatment, if we can avoid duplication and preserve the time and date stamps and the location information. I realise that might be a bit much to ask.

I can capture a video in meta glasses and get it described with the app? Interesting! not realtime, but still...

"Someone on here mentioned a few comments back that they produced a slideshow and imported it (as a video) to PiccyBot. Simple question; how did that person do that? I can't find any way in the photos app that allows me to save a slideshow I have created. slightly off-topic I know but I've asked elsewhere and it didn't seem to register."
Personally I can't seem to get the photo app to share or save the slideshows I created. i read online you save the photos to a folder, and then you save that folder as memory and then you can go to memory and save it as video- but I've not been able to get that to work. So I use the alternative method: Imovie. The imovie app on your phone will allow you to join videos, photos, insert sound clips, add music and all that. And it's pretty accessible and self explanatory.

Subject line says it all. I share a video to PiccyBot, or a photo, and nothing happens. I'm returned to the share sheet with all its various options. Anyone else having this?

I just went into the Photos app, selected a video and shared it to the pixie and it worked great.

Where are you sharing from?

I'm sharing from the photos app too. It doesn't seem to be playing ball.

HI Martijn, I'm using an iPhone 13, latest IOS 17.5.1 and latest version of PiccyBot. Sounds like it's just me, then..

Not just you, Bingo Little. Tried sharing a video from Whatsapp and it didn't work. Using iPhone14 pro with IOS 17.5.

Just tried via photos app and no issues sharing photos or videos. So a little strange.

I tried sharing a photo in WhatsApp and it worked OK, so WhatsApp isn't totally broken. But as was said, maybe something to do with the specific images or videos.

Everything I have tried has been captured with my Meta Ray-bans if that makes a difference.

hi Martijn, can you add the option for sending image to the ai without downloading the imager first?

example, when in safari, if you tap and hold an image, various options come up, share sheet is one of the options. tap share and all the possible share options pop up--mail, message, etc., but piccybot is not one of them.

"Subject line says it all. I share a video to PiccyBot, or a photo, and nothing happens. I'm returned to the share sheet with all its various options. Anyone else having this?"
I had the same issue, so I went to the app store, into account to see if my piccy is up to date, it said it was, then just to be sure, I double tapped on the piccybott in appstore to open up the app's page where it shows rating and description and all that, and wallaaa, there's an "update" button. After updating using the button there, everything works fine now. Weird how appstore told me it was up to date yet the update button only showed on the app's page.

of course the image has to be downloaded, but it doesn't need to be saved to the phone, it can simply be temporarily cached and sent along. or more technically appropriate, it should simply be saved to the app and not the photo library.

right now, one has to save the image to the photo library first, and delete it when it no longer needed.

Hello Martijn,

I have been testing this app since this morning and it works very well. I am curious about a few things, though:

1. I cannot seem to see the currency rate in my country. I am located in India, where we use INR. The dollar is expensive here, so $20 is a lot of money in INR. Could you make the pricing a bit more reasonable? I would like to purchase the lifetime plan, but the current pricing seems a bit high for me.

2. Is there any possibility of adding live video description in the future? Instead of capturing or sharing a video, could we receive a live description as we turn on the camera? I understand that this would be difficult to implement and would require a lot of funding, but I would love to see it in your app first.

3. Can we not share a video or image directly from any app? For example, I tried sharing one from WhatsApp, but I could not find your app in the share sheet.

4. Is this app available for Android users as well? Some of my friends who use Android would like to try it out.

$20 is like INR 1600, and we're talking of a life-time subscription here. A monthly subscription costs like INR 299 otherwise.

Hello, thank you for such a wonderful app! I am enjoying it very much and I am a subscriber!
I was scrolling through Reddit and I found the following video on a Shortcuts subbed about creating a shortcut that would let ChatGPT 4.0 describe images. Could something like this be done for this app?
I have attached the link to the video, and also the Reddit post for anybody who is interested. I’m not very good at programming apps or shortcuts so any help would be appreciated.
Thank you again for such a great app.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AkmtCXlEldk&si=ln-h76JsO8pyQw3o

The Shortcuts sub reddit

https://reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/1d9go6a/creating_a_shortcut_using_gpt4o_to_explain_photos/

Hi everyone. I tried to get a one month subscription for this app, and first of all I thank the author for his excellent work. Knowing very well the photos and videos I have, and comparing them with Be My Eyes, I noticed that, even though I use the ChatGPT4O model, the description of BeMyEyes is better. For example, in one photo there was a man with a cigarette in his hand, described well by BMY, while PiccyBot said a piece of paper. I noticed these inaccuracies in more than one photo. BMY precisely described a little girl in a photo while PiccyBot said a person, without specifying whether man or woman.
Even in one video a woman was described as a man. I don't know if the people at BeMyEyes have optimized their algorithm, but very often their description is more accurate.

Thanks for your reply, and congratulations again for your work. Could you then add the default phrase to query the AI among the options? Because if I share a photo, for example from WhatsApp, the phrase chosen by you is always used.

I just wanted to come out here to thank the developer of this amazing app. I've been having so much fun with having it describe pictures from my photo library, and I've even had it describe a couple of videos. For myself, personally, I have, at least for now, turned off the personalities of the voices. Somehow, I seem to have better results with no personality. I've also set it to provide me the lengthiest descriptions possible, and it's amazing. There are times when it hasn't been entirely accurate. Most notebly, I'm thinking of a short video my friend took when I was trying some coffee she made. I was tempted by the flavor name, but it just tasted like yucky old coffee to me; not a coffee drinker at all. It smells great but I can't stand the taste. Anyway, when I used GbT as the ai model, It kind-a made up its own version of what happened. According to it, I said the coffee was delicious and smiled. That is, in fact, quite the opposite of my tru reaction. Geminy Pro seemed to be a bit more accurate, so I'm using that as my default for the moment. I'll most definitely check out some of the other AI models just for fun. For anyone on the fense about this app, please check it out. It's definitely worth every penny I paid for it.