There are a lot of news about ChatGPT right now, and this week GPT-4 was released. For those that watched at the live stream, some interesting news was announced – the Copenhagen founded startup Be My Eyes is working with Open AI to make the AI model understand visuals better.
Be My Eyes is an app that has been working with visuals for a long time, and has focused on helping blind people use the smartphone to see and identify objects in the real world. Now apparently that technology is helping to create completely new features for ChatGPT.
“The image features is in preview, it is not yet publicly available. It is something we work with one partner, Be My Eyes, in order to truly develop it and get it ready for prime time,”
said Greg Brockman, co-founder at OpenAI
Be My Eyes released some info earlier this week, on what they want to build. This gives some insight into how they are using OpenAI for their tool. It did however not mention how they help the OpenAI team develop their feature, rather on how it will improve Be My Eyes service.
“We are entering the next wave of innovation for accessibility technology powered by AI. This new Be My Eyes feature will be transformative in providing people who are blind or have low vision with powerful tools to better navigate physical environments, address everyday needs, and gain more independence,”
said Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes.
The new tool from Be My Eyes integrates OpenAI’s latest generative AI technology, with the goal of providing an unprecedented level of accessibility and power to the hundreds of million people who are blind or have low vision globally.
“We are thrilled to work with OpenAI to further our mission of improving accessibility for the 253 million people who are blind or have low-vision, with safe and accessible applications of generative AI.”
The Virtual Volunteer feature will be integrated into the existing app and contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator powered by GPT-4. Users can send images via the app to an AI-powered Virtual Volunteer, which will answer any question about that image and provide instantaneous, conversational visual assistance for a wide variety of tasks.
Be My Eyes was launched in 2015 – if you want to read what we said about it back then, you can find that article here.
