Hello to all
I have a 15 pro running iOS 27 and am really enjoying the new image description feature. My question is, can this feature be offline? Currently it seems to only work online. The only setting I found was under VO>recogntion>mode on device toggle. But when turned on, I get a notification saying that "An error has occurred" when ever I try to use image description, no matter if I choose describe screen or describe object. It seems to only work online. Can anyone confirm this? Any help is appreciated. Because I would like to try this with personal documents and don't want to have my personal information sent to a server. Thanks in advance.
Have a great day
Fritz
Comments
16 pro and up
I think the AI works better in the above.
Having the same issue on 16e
Thing is, if the feature will only be available offline on the 16 Pro and newer, why do we even have that toggle in the first place? I'd been getting errors until I found and disabled the on-device switch, which shouldn't have been present at all if it won't really work on my device then.
iOS 27.2Re: Having the same issue on 16e
Perhaps a bug if not, apple wants people to get the new phone.
Intelligent Image Descriptions Not Available Offline
It is my understanding that Intelligent Image Descriptions are not available offline. When the "On-Device Mode" option is enabled, VoiceOver appears to fall back to the pre-iOS 27 image descriptions.
Maybe only on the newest phones?
I've asked this question a couple times out of curiosity.
The newest generation iPhones (17/18 Pro, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo), have more advanced on-device models because they have more ram. AFAIK,, Apple has only said this enables a few things like the better dictation and the expressive Siri voices. But those are things that the mainstream would care about.
I'm wondering if the more advanced models that the newer phones have would mean the native image descriptions could be generated on-device. I also have a 15 Pro, and it does seem like maybe Apple might be using their private cloud compute servers to generate the image descriptions for VO. I've tried having a picture described with airplane mode on, and when I didn't have good cell signal one day, and in both cases, it kept playing the sound that the description was being generated, and either came back with an error, or just the shorter descriptions we've been getting since around 2021.
Does the same thing happen if you're using a 17/18 Pro or an iPhone Air?
Works here on my 16 pro
I just checked it by turning on airplane mode and was able to do both image and item description with no problem.
Just a thought, but perhaps turn off on device image description? I think that perhaps that may be simply the old way of doing things, and therefore VO is always trying to fall back to that?
Image description offline
Hello All
Thanks for your replies and suggestions. I tried what Inforover suggested but had no luck with that. Interestingly when turning on airplane mode, I discovered that wifi didn't automatically turn off, but that's a different topic. What I also learned on a side note, is that in on device mode and being offline, the new live description function where you can ask a question, interestingly works offline. Go figure. So the question remains, does image description work offline, and if yes on what device may it work on? Thanks again for all of your info's.
Have a great day
Fritz