Machine learning platform, Hugging Face, has released an iOS app that will make sense of the world around you as seen by your iPhone’s camera. Just point it at a scene, or click a picture, and it will deploy an AI to describe it, identify objects, perform translation, or pull text-based details.
Named HuggingSnap, the app takes a multi-model approach to understanding the scene around you as an input, and it’s now available for free on the App Store. It is powered by SmolVLM2, an open AI model that can handle text, image, and video as input formats.
The overarching goal of the app is to let people learn about the objects and scenery around them, including plant and animal recognition. The idea is not too different from Visual Intelligence on iPhones, but HuggingSnap has a crucial leg-up over its Apple rival.
All it needs is an iPhone running iOS 18 and you’re good to go. The UI of HuggingSnap is not too different from what you get with Visual Intelligence. But there’s a fundamental difference here.
Apple relies on ChatGPT for Visual Intelligence to work. That’s because Siri is currently not capable of acting like a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, both of which have their own knowledge bank. Instead, it offloads all such user requests and queries to ChatGPT.
That requires an internet connection since ChatGPT can’t work in offline mode. HuggingSnap, on the other hand, works just fine. Moreover, an offline approach means no user data ever leaves your phone, which is always a welcome change from a privacy perspective.
HuggingSnap is powered by the SmolVLM2 model developed by Hugging Face. So, what can this model running the show behind this app accomplish? Well, a lot. Aside from answering questions based on what it sees through an iPhone’s camera, it can also process images picked from your phone’s gallery.
For example, show it a picture of any historical monument, and ask it to give you travel suggestions. It can understand the stuff appearing on a graph, or make sense of an electricity bill’s picture and answer queries based on the details it has picked up from the document.
It has a lightweight architecture and is particularly well-suited for on-device applications of AI. On benchmarks, it performs better than Google’s competing open PaliGemma (3B) model and rubs shoulders with Alibaba’s rival Qwen AI model with vision capabilities.
The biggest advantage is that it requires less system resources to run, which is particularly important in the context of smartphones. Interestingly, the popular VLC media player is also using the same SmolVLM2 model to provide video descriptions, letting users search through a video using natural language prompts.
It can also intelligently extract the most important highlight moments from a video. “Designed for efficiency, SmolVLM can answer questions about images, describe visual content, create stories grounded on multiple images, or function as a pure language model without visual inputs,” says the app’s GitHub repository.
Earlier this year, an uplifting story detailed how a mother turned to ChatGPT and discovered that her son was suffering from a rare neurological disor
ChatGPT usage is more prevalent than ever, and its current model offers a monthly subscription of $20 for ChatGPT Plus or the mind-boggling steep $200
Google’s Chrome browser has offered a rich suite of privacy and safety features for a while now. Take, for example, Enhanced Safe Browsing, which was
Apple WWDC This story is part of our complete Apple WWDC coverage Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is just two months away, and that mea
You may have occasionally joked about how companies these days seem to be falling over themselves to launch something, anything, that has AI, even jus
Barely a few weeks ago, Google introduced a new AI Search mode. The idea is to provide answers as a wall of text, just the way an AI chatbot answers y
About a year ago, I started learning how to code in Swift, Apple’s app development language. The idea was to eventually be able to build my own iOS ap
Over the past year or so, a strange contradiction has emerged in the world of Apple: the company makes some of the best computers in the world, whethe
We are a comprehensive and trusted information platform dedicated to delivering high-quality content across a wide range of topics, including society, technology, business, health, culture, and entertainment.
From breaking news to in-depth reports, we adhere to the principles of accuracy and diverse perspectives, helping readers find clarity and reliability in today’s fast-paced information landscape.
Our goal is to be a dependable source of knowledge for every reader—making information not only accessible but truly trustworthy. Looking ahead, we will continue to enhance our content and services, connecting the world and delivering value.
