See things more clearly

A really useful "says what it sees" app for people with vision issues

- By CARRIE MARSHALL

ONE OF THE brilliant things about the iPhone is that it can make people's lives easier and better, and the Be My Eyes app is a great example of that. It launched on iOS back in 2015, enabling you to set up an instant video call with a volunteer who could help you read things like cooking instructions and food expiry dates, letters, signs, or medicine labels. It was a huge success from launch, and today it has over 8.5 million volunteers.

Be My Eyes is now available for a range of devices, including notebooks, tablets, and even Meta’s smart glasses, and on iPhone it has embraced the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to be even more useful. Be My Eyes is an example of good AI rather than gimmicky AI: as we’ll discover, it enables you to get very detailed and accurate descriptions of whatever you point your iPhone camera at — not just labels and signs, but the world around you, too.

READ AND SUMMARIZE

Whether you use the Call A Volunteer service or the AI features in the app, you’ll need to have a data connection both to establish a video call for the former, and to connect to the ChatGPT AI service for the latter.