By Roman Aglaganov
Be My Eyes is a Danish app with a beautifully simple idea: when a blind or low-vision person needs to see something, such as the expiry date on a carton or the colour of a shirt, they press a button and a sighted volunteer somewhere in the world answers a video call and helps. More than ten million volunteers have signed up.
An AI volunteer
On 14 March 2023, the same day OpenAI announced GPT-4, Be My Eyes announced a “Virtual Volunteer” built on it. GPT-4 could understand images, not just text, and Be My Eyes was one of the first companies to put that to work. The tool, later renamed Be My AI, lets users send a photo and ask anything about it.
The launch example was a photo of the inside of a fridge: the AI identifies what is in there, then suggests what you could cook with it and walks you through a recipe. The same trick works for labels, menus, letters and the photos relatives send to the family group chat.
Why people liked it
No social cost: calling a stranger about something personal or trivial can feel awkward. An AI does not judge your mess or your fourth question about the same sock.
Context: older image-to-text tools could say “a box”. GPT-4 could say which box, read the instructions on it and answer follow-up questions.
Within weeks of its wider rollout, the company said it had been used a million times, and it was named one of Time’s best inventions of 2023.
The limits
AI can still be confidently wrong, which matters a lot when the user cannot double-check visually. Be My Eyes kept its human volunteers alongside the AI, so people can still call a person when it really matters. The best accessibility tool, it turns out, is a choice of help.
