New AI app for describing images and video: PiccyBot

It exists at least sinceautumn 2024 (when I purchased mine), but most probably since much earlier. There was a price rise for this in summer 2025 due to increasing costs. If I am not mistaken, its current price is 24.95 USD. In my opinion that's not just a very fair price, but a truly outstandingly moderate one indeed. In my home country, Hungary (a Central-European country), which is far from being among the richest countries, a single meal composed of two dishes costs usually more at a restaurant that is even in the lower middle price range. For another comparison example, my one-month subscription fee for home TV + landline phone + Internet (1 Gbps theoretical bandwidth) in a package currently values at nearly the same if I express that fee in US dollars.

wow! you can ask more from the main screen, there is a text field at the top, the only problem is you can't add pictures, so your conversation is limited to the initial photo you provide. the only time you must use the ask more button is when you need to upload additional picture. my suggestion was to replace the ask more button with the attach more button, like you find on the ask more screen. if you just use the good old camera button, it starts a new session just like before.

now, you might not be use to the new setup in the begining, but why is it so bad as it streamline the whole process?

Yes, of course, I am aware that you can use the text field on the main screen for asking anything. But "Ask more" works differently, and this difference can be significant in some cases.
What does asking from the text field on the main screen do (in my understanding and experience)? It feeds the image or video together with that single question to the model in use (set in settings if one is subscribed). That is called an initial prompt in AI terminology. What happens if you ask another question there (again in my experience and understanding)? It resends the image or video and the new question to the model and gets the answer. The emphasis is on the "new question": the model won't see your earlier question this time! That is the key difference to "Ask More". If you use "Ask More" the model will see all your earlier questions and its responses as a whole chat together with the image or video which you are asking about. Why this difference can be important? Because LLMs are very very context sensitive. They may respond quite differently if you ask two questions in a single chat (like with "Ask More"), than if you send your two questions separately (like when you do it from the main sccreen). You may not perceive this difference in each and every case so noticably, it depends very much on the video or image and your questions. But there is definitely a difference which I very well know from my wide-spread usage of Piccybot. Using "Ask More" produces much more usable, practical, and to-the-point answers in my experience in almost all cases compared to the case when I would ask them from the main screen.
But please don't just take my word for it, LaBoheme, you can experiment freely and compare your results if you ask multiple questions from the main screen and from "Ask More" about the same image or video.
I also encourage Martin to chime in to ascertain that my understanding of these two features is correct or not.

Why not include the attach more with the ask more interface? This is what Be My AI does, and I find it works very well on iOS. Not that PiccyBut has anything to do with Be My Eyes, but the recommendation stands.
Just my two cents...

I'm guessing they don't combine the two for the reason they explained. Inconsistency. I think I'd rather know what I'm getting in to when I choose one option or the other, as opposed to taking my chances when I choose a combined option. Then, too, why not offer all three?

On the other hand, I'm a bit confused by all the AI models or profiles or options or whatever they're called. Why so many? Why not more? What distinguishes one from another when arrowing through the list? Unless I missed something, they aren't even numbered.

And why is the send button so far from the text field? Why not put it right next to the text field?

I apologize if my questions have already been addressed. I only just dove into this very long list of comments and questions. Smile. Nice looking app, though.

I like the lifetime subscription price. I'm tempted. Does it include all upgrades, too?

Brian, "attach more" is already integrated into "ask more". It is there for a while. On the "Ask more" screen, you have three options besides sending your follow-up questions of course. They are: copy, share and attach image. The third does what you point at. This way you can feed multiple images to the model together with multiple questions which can relate to any of the images or their relations etc. The important point is that if you use "ask more" your whole conversation is fed to the model as a single chat together of course with the images.
Bruce, yes, of course, the lifetime price includes all updates in the whole lifetime of the app, that is what this word means. I jumped on this vagon for lifetime Piccybot subscription around version 2.13 or something like that and still get the latest 2.42 of course.
to everybody and Martin: in my opinion one of the unique strengths of Piccybot compared to other description apps (and there are quite many out there nowadays) is its extreme configurability (provided that you have subscription) and its versatility. The variety of images and videos combined with user preferences and needs (degree of sight loss, blind from birth or not etc. etc.) is infinite. I see the only way to match this variety is to give users many many options to finetune their usage to their specific need, and that's what exactly the subscribed Piccybot does, and I frankly praise Martin for this approach. Yes, we are all different. Some do not need a whole array of models, some do. Some are fine with the initial description, some want to dig deeper. And I could go on and on. Piccybot lets us users to choose our way, and that is great in my opinion. Yes, it may take some more work to see through some options, but it is the case with literarily every app. Freedom and choices walk hand in hand with investing a bit more work on the user side in some cases, but in my opinion it is well worth it. But does somebody like the default settings? Totally fine, it is possible. Does somebody want to experiment with different models to feel the nuances of an image or especially of a video? (video description seems to differ much more between models). Fine, it is there also! All in all, this versatility of Piccybot is a value I strongly vote for to keep by all means.

If both the ask more, and the attach more are already together, then why are users asking for an attach more option? I think I am missing something here.

It is quite obvious from the posts that our experience level with Piccybot, our preferences, our ways of working with the app etc. etc. differ much from person to person. That is natural. Some folks (like me) find the current working of Piccybot versatile, intuitive, straightforward and practical, and some folks would prefer other workflows, which they personally would find more streamlined for them. It's a very hard task for Martin to make decisions, choices and adjustments in this very diverse user base. I don't envy his task for a single moment. However I praise his attitude that he wants to give various options to the users, which I think is pretty much the only way to go in such a diverse user base even if it introduces some added complexity both on the developer side and sometimes on the user side too.

This is an awesome app! I have downloaded the app and purchased the lifetime subscription and it is working very well. I was able to send a video from YouTube to the app and it read clearly what was displayed in the video. Keep up thr amazing work, and looking forward to seeing what's next in future.

the ask more bug can kick in after only a single follow up question or after several. Unfortunately it isn't consistently every time when it happens but it is a major bug that is preventing me from enjoying the app as intended.
Having said that, I do appreciate how difficult it is pinning down the bug and addressing it.

Thanks, I appreciate your input and explanation. 🙂

When I now ask for a follow up question, I'm getting the following error message,
Access blocked due to unauthorized access. Please download the official picksybot app from the app store.

Hi Martijn,
I was looking at the Subscription screen as I’m thinking of upgrading. I noticed that all of the benefits listed on that screen are appearing, or at least being spoken by VoiceOver, three times each. Bit weird.
I also wondered; does the premium version include a conversational interface via voice? I’m thinking like Envision Ally? I like Ally’s UX in that sense, but find I get much better results from PiccyBot, so this would be great. Not to replace typing, but as an alternative you could use when the situation fits.
Final question; settle a debate for me… is PiccyBot pronounced “PixieBot” or “PikkyBot”? ☺️
Dave

Hello Dave,
Personally I would hold off on purchasing until the developer has addressed the follow up bugs I've identified.

Hello,
It looks like the ask more issue has finally been resolved. My huge thanks to Martijn for addressing this. I realize it was not an easy one to track down and I truly appreciate your time and effort in addressing this.
I noticed when it came to language models that the language model selection is not being saved when one exits the app.
Is this a result of the added security enhancements?