How many words is a picture worth?

 

Luke Blackall
Thursday 26 April 2012 22:20 BST
Comments
The Descriptive Camera gives a description of what's on the picture
The Descriptive Camera gives a description of what's on the picture

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Progress is a wonderful thing. Once you might have taken photographs and shown them to family or shared them on Facebook. The Descriptive Camera, however, the latest in prototype design, doesn't give you a picture, instead it gives you a description of what is in the frame.

The camera is the brainchild of Matt Richardson, who describes himself among other things as "a technophile" and "maker of things". After lining up the photo and taking the picture, the user waits before a brief description is printed out.

"Looks like a cupboard which is ugly and old, has name plates on it with a study lamp attached to it," reads one.

Rather than a sign of a new and terrifyingly opinionated era in affordable Artificial Intelligence, the $200 camera's abilities come from online behemoth Amazon's Mechanical Turk programme. Each picture is sent to a worker who carries out a Human Intelligence Task and provides a brief description, at a cost of about 77p, roughly the same cost as a Polaroid picture.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in