AI Assistant Stock Trading

AI Assistant Stock Trading — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

Automatic meter reading

Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices (gas, electric) and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption. AMR technologies include handheld, mobile and network technologies based on telephony platforms (wired and wireless), radio frequency (RF), or powerline transmission. == Technologies == === Touch technology === With touch-based AMR, a meter reader carries a handheld computer or data collection device with a wand or probe. The device automatically collects the readings from a meter by touching or placing the read probe close to a reading coil enclosed in the touchpad. When a button is pressed, the probe sends an interrogate signal to the touch module to collect the meter reading. The software in the device matches the serial number to one in the route database, and saves the meter reading for later download to a billing or data collection computer. Since the meter reader still has to go to the site of the meter, this is sometimes referred to as "on-site" AMR. Another form of contact reader uses a standardized infrared port to transmit data. Protocols are standardized between manufacturers by such documents as ANSI C12.18 or IEC 61107. === AMR hosting === AMR hosting is a back-office solution which allows a user to track their electricity, water, or gas consumption over the Internet. All data is collected in near real-time, and is stored in a database by data acquisition software. The user can view the data via a web application, and can analyze the data using various online analysis tools such as charting load profiles, analyzing tariff components, and verify their utility bill. === Radio frequency network === Radio frequency based AMR can take many forms. The more common ones are handheld, mobile, satellite and fixed network solutions. There are both two-way RF systems and one-way RF systems in use that use both licensed and unlicensed RF bands. In a two-way or "wake up" system, a radio signal is normally sent to an AMR meter's unique serial number, instructing its transceiver to power-up and transmit its data. The meter transceiver and the reading transceiver both send and receive radio signals. In a one-way "bubble-up" or continuous broadcast type system, the meter transmits continuously and data is sent every few seconds. This means the reading device can be a receiver only, and the meter a transmitter only. Data travels only from the meter transmitter to the reading receiver. There are also hybrid systems that combine one-way and two-way techniques, using one-way communication for reading and two-way communication for programming functions. RF-based meter reading usually eliminates the need for the meter reader to enter the property or home, or to locate and open an underground meter pit. The utility saves money by increased speed of reading, has less liability from entering private property, and has fewer missed readings from being unable to access the meter. The technology based on RF is not readily accepted everywhere. In several Asian countries, the technology faces a barrier of regulations in place pertaining to use of the radio frequency of any radiated power. For example, in India the radio frequency which is generally in ISM band is not free to use even for low power radio of 10 mW. The majority of manufacturers of electricity meters have radio frequency devices in the frequency band of 433/868 MHz for large scale deployment in European countries. The frequency band of 2.4 GHz can be now used in India for outdoor as well as indoor applications, but few manufacturers have shown products within this frequency band. Initiatives in radio frequency AMR in such countries are being taken up with regulators wherever the cost of licensing outweighs the benefits of AMR. ==== Handheld ==== In handheld AMR, a meter reader carries a handheld computer with a built-in or attached receiver/transceiver (radio frequency or touch) to collect meter readings from an AMR capable meter. This is sometimes referred to as "walk-by" meter reading since the meter reader walks by the locations where meters are installed as they go through their meter reading route. Handheld computers may also be used to manually enter readings without the use of AMR technology as an alternate but this will not support exhaustive data which can be accurately read using the meter reading electronically. ==== Mobile ==== Mobile or "drive-by" meter reading is where a reading device is installed in a vehicle. The meter reader drives the vehicle while the reading device automatically collects the meter readings. Often, for mobile meter reading, the reading equipment includes navigational and mapping features provided by GPS and mapping software. With mobile meter reading, the reader does not normally have to read the meters in any particular route order, but just drives the service area until all meters are read. Components often consist of a laptop or proprietary computer, software, RF receiver/transceiver, and external vehicle antennas. ==== Satellite ==== Transmitters for data collection satellites can be installed in the field next to existing meters. The satellite AMR devices communicate with the meter for readings, and then sends those readings over a fixed or mobile satellite network. This network requires a clear view to the sky for the satellite transmitter/receiver, but eliminates the need to install fixed towers or send out field technicians, thereby being particularly suited for areas with low geographic meter density. ==== RF technologies commonly used for AMR ==== Narrow Band (single fixed radio frequency) Spread spectrum Direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) There are also meters using AMR with RF technologies such as cellular phone data systems, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Wavenis and others. Some systems operate with U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed frequencies and others under FCC Part 15, which allows use of unlicensed radio frequencies. ==== Wi-Fi ==== WiSmart is a versatile platform which can be used by a variety of electrical home appliances in order to provide wireless TCP/IP communication using the 802.11 b/g protocol. Devices such as the Smart Thermostat permit a utility to lower a home's power consumption to help manage power demand. The city of Corpus Christi became one of the first cities in the United States to implement citywide Wi-Fi, which had been free until May 31, 2007, mainly to facilitate AMR after a meter reader was attacked by a dog. Today many meters are designed to transmit using Wi-Fi, even if a Wi-Fi network is not available, and they are read using a drive-by local Wi-Fi hand held receiver. The meters installed in Corpus Christi are not directly Wi-Fi enabled, but rather transmit narrow-band burst telemetry on the 460 MHz band. This narrow-band signal has much greater range than Wi-Fi, so the number of receivers required for the project are far fewer. Special receiver stations then decode the narrow-band signals and resend the data via Wi-Fi. Most of the automated utility meters installed in the Corpus Christi area are battery powered. Wi-Fi technology is unsuitable for long-term battery-powered operation. === Power line communication === PLC is a method where electronic data is transmitted over power lines back to the substation, then relayed to a central computer in the utility's main office. This would be considered a type of fixed network system—the network being the distribution network which the utility has built and maintains to deliver electric power. Such systems are primarily used for electric meter reading. Some providers have interfaced gas and water meters to feed into a PLC type system. == Brief history == In 1972, Theodore George "Ted" Paraskevakos, while working with Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, developed a sensor monitoring system which used digital transmission for security, fire and medical alarm systems as well as meter reading capabilities for all utilities. This technology was a spin-off of the automatic telephone line identification system, now known as caller ID. In 1974, Paraskevakos was awarded a U.S. patent for this technology. In 1977, he launched Metretek, Inc., which developed and produced the first fully automated, commercially available remote meter reading and load management system. Since this system was developed pre-Internet, Metret
Read more →
Huawei Member Center

Huawei Member Center is a benefits app which runs using Huawei Mobile Services. Originally launched in China, Huawei Member Center is now being developed primarily around devices such as P40 Pro and the Nova 7. == Membership Levels == The Huawei Member Center provides rewards in two primary ways, 1) device-specific & promotions and 2) via frequent use of Huawei products and apps, using points to redeem additional benefits. In China, Huawei members are already classified into three levels, the highest being “elite”. Membership level determines the level of perks received, from priority access to the service hotline, new device events & proprietary early-access opportunities. Huawei ran a number of member events in 2019 called "Huawei Member Day" to promote the Member Center including providing tips for the Mate 30 Pro and offering a 50Gb cloud storage upgrade to users. == HMC in China == Huawei Member Center Has seen significant adoption in China and the east, the rewards for use on the app have ranged from free book coupons, discounted travel and exclusive gifts of new devices, such as the Huawei Enjoy Z.
Read more →
ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. Originally released in November 2022, the product uses large language models—specifically generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs)—to generate text, speech, and images in response to user prompts. ChatGPT accelerated the AI boom, an ongoing period marked by rapid investment and public attention toward the field of artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI operates the service on a freemium model. Users can interact with ChatGPT through text, audio, and image prompts. ChatGPT was quickly adopted, reaching 100 million monthly active users two months after its release and 900 million weekly active users in February 2026. It has been lauded for its potential to transform numerous professional fields, and has instigated public debate about the nature of creativity and the future of knowledge work. The chatbot has also been criticized for its limitations and potential for unethical use. It can generate plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers, known as hallucinations. Biases in its training data have been reflected in its responses. The chatbot can facilitate academic dishonesty, generate misinformation, and create malicious code. The ethics of its development, particularly the use of copyrighted content as training data, have also drawn controversy. == Features == ChatGPT is a chatbot and AI assistant built on large language model (LLM) technology. It is designed to generate human-like text and can carry out a wide variety of tasks. These include, among many others, writing and debugging computer programs, composing music, scripts, fairy tales, and essays, answering questions (sometimes at a level exceeding that of an average human test-taker), and generating business concepts. ChatGPT is frequently used for translation and summarization tasks, and can simulate interactive environments such as a Linux terminal, a multi-user chat room, or simple text-based games such as tic-tac-toe. Users interact with ChatGPT through conversations which consist of text, audio, and image inputs and outputs. The user's inputs to these conversations are referred to as prompts. An optional "Memory" feature allows users to tell ChatGPT to memorize specific information. Another option allows ChatGPT to recall old conversations. GPT-based moderation classifiers are used to reduce the risk of harmful outputs being presented to users. In March 2023, OpenAI added support for plugins for ChatGPT. This includes both plugins made by OpenAI, such as web browsing and code interpretation, and external plugins from developers such as Expedia, OpenTable, and Zapier. From October to December 2024, ChatGPT Search was deployed. It allows ChatGPT to search the web in an attempt to make more accurate and up-to-date responses. It increased OpenAI's direct competition with major search engines. OpenAI allows businesses to tailor how their content appears in the ChatGPT Search results and influence what sources are used. In December 2024, OpenAI launched a new feature allowing users to call ChatGPT with a telephone for up to 15 minutes per month for free. In September 2025, OpenAI added a feature called Pulse, which generates a daily analysis of a user's chats and connected apps such as Gmail and Google Calendar. In October 2025, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Atlas, a browser integrating the ChatGPT assistant directly into web navigation, to compete with existing browsers such as Google Chrome. It has an additional feature called "agentic mode" that allows it to take online actions for the user. === Paid tier === ChatGPT was initially free to the public and remains free in a limited capacity. In February 2023, OpenAI launched a premium service, ChatGPT Plus, that costs US$20 per month. What was offered on the paid plan versus the free tier changed as OpenAI has continued to update ChatGPT, and a Pro tier at $200/mo was introduced in December 2024. The Pro launch coincided with the release of the o1 model. In August 2025, ChatGPT Go was offered in India for ₹399 per month. The plan has higher limits than the free version. === Mobile apps === In May-July 2023, OpenAI began offering ChatGPT iOS and Android apps. ChatGPT can also power Android's assistant. An app for Windows launched on the Microsoft Store on October 15, 2024. === Languages === OpenAI met Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson in 2022. In 2023, OpenAI worked with a team of 40 Icelandic volunteers to fine-tune ChatGPT's Icelandic conversation skills as a part of Iceland's attempts to preserve the Icelandic language. ChatGPT (based on GPT-4) was better able to translate Japanese to English when compared to Bing, Bard, and DeepL Translator in 2023. In December 2023, the Albanian government decided to use ChatGPT for the rapid translation of European Union documents and the analysis of required changes needed for Albania's accession to the EU. Several studies have shown that ChatGPT can outperform Google Translate in some mainstream translation tasks. However, as of 2024, no machine translation services match human expert performance. In August 2024, a representative of the Asia Pacific wing of OpenAI made a visit to Taiwan, during which a demonstration of ChatGPT's Chinese abilities was made. ChatGPT's Mandarin Chinese abilities were lauded, but the ability of the AI to produce content in Mandarin Chinese in a Taiwanese accent was found to be "less than ideal" due to differences between mainland Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Mandarin. === GPT Store === In November 2023, OpenAI released GPT Builder, a tool allowing users to customize ChatGPT's behavior for a specific use case. The customized systems are referred to as GPTs. In January 2024, OpenAI launched the GPT Store, a marketplace for GPTs. At launch, OpenAI included more than 3 million GPTs created by GPT Builder users in the GPT Store. === ChatGPT Apps === In September 2025, OpenAI added support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) to ChatGPT apps. When enabled in developer mode, this allows for improved third-party access to ChatGPT tools and servers. === Deep Research === In February 2025, OpenAI released Deep Research, a feature that generates reports based on extensive web searches. It was initially based on the reasoning model o3 and took 5 to 30 minutes per report. === Images === In October 2023, OpenAI's image generation model DALL-E 3 was integrated into ChatGPT. The integration used ChatGPT to write prompts for DALL-E guided by conversations with users. In March 2025, OpenAI updated ChatGPT to generate images using GPT Image instead of DALL-E. One of the most significant improvements was in the generation of text within images, which is especially useful for branded content. However, this ability is noticeably worse in non-Latin alphabets. The model can also generate new images based on existing ones provided in the prompt. These images are generated with C2PA metadata, which can be used to verify that they are AI-generated. OpenAI has emplaced additional safeguards to prevent what the company deems to be harmful image generation. === Agents === In 2025, OpenAI added several features to make ChatGPT more agentic (capable of autonomously performing longer tasks). In January, Operator was released. It was capable of autonomously performing tasks through web browser interactions, including filling forms, placing online orders, scheduling appointments, and other browser-based tasks. It was controlling a software environment inside a virtual machine with limited internet connectivity and with safety restrictions. It struggled with complex user interfaces. In May 2025, OpenAI introduced an agent for coding named Codex. It is capable of writing software, answering codebase questions, running tests, and proposing pull requests. It is based on a fine-tuned version of OpenAI o3. It has two versions, one running in a virtual machine in the cloud, and one where the agent runs in the cloud, but performs actions on a local machine connected via API. In July 2025, OpenAI released ChatGPT agent, an AI agent that can perform multi-step tasks. Like Operator, it controls a virtual computer. It also inherits from Deep Research's ability to gather and summarize significant volumes of information. The user can interrupt tasks or provide additional instructions as needed. In September 2025, OpenAI partnered with Stripe, Inc. to release Agentic Commerce Protocol, enabling purchases through ChatGPT. At launch, the feature was limited to purchases on Etsy from US users with a payment method linked to their OpenAI account. OpenAI takes an undisclosed cut from the merchant's payment. === ChatGPT Health === On January 7, 2026, OpenAI introduced a feature called "ChatGPT Health", whereby ChatGPT can discuss the user's health in a way that is separate from other chats. The feature is not available for users in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or the European Economic Area, and is available on a waitli
Read more →
ELIZA

ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but gave no response that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a Lisp-like expression. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient's words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatbots (originally "chatterbots") and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test. Weizenbaum intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised that some people, including his secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program, a phenomenon that came to be called the ELIZA effect. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary. The original ELIZA source code had been missing since its creation in the 1960s, as it was not common to publish articles that included source code at that time. However, more recently the MAD-SLIP source code was discovered in the MIT archives and published on various platforms, such as the Internet Archive. The source code is of high historical interest since it demonstrates not only the specificity of programming languages and techniques at that time, but also the beginning of software layering and abstraction as a means of achieving sophisticated software programming. == Overview == Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, created a conversational interaction somewhat similar to what might take place in the office of "a [non-directive] psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview" and to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial". While ELIZA is best known for acting in the manner of a psychotherapist, the speech patterns are due to the data and instructions supplied by the DOCTOR script. ELIZA itself examined the text for keywords, applied values to said keywords, and transformed the input into an output; the script that ELIZA ran determined the keywords, set the values of keywords, and set the rules of transformation for the output. Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge", allowing it to reflect back the patient's statements to carry the conversation forward. The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program. Weizenbaum named his program ELIZA after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (also appearing in the musical My Fair Lady, which was based on the play and was hugely popular at the time). According to Weizenbaum, ELIZA's ability to be "incrementally improved" by various users made it similar to Eliza Doolittle, since Eliza Doolittle was taught to speak with an upper-class accent in Shaw's play. However, unlike the human character in Shaw's play, ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA's active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates. Weizenbaum first implemented ELIZA in his own SLIP list-processing language, where, depending upon the initial entries by the user, the illusion of human intelligence could appear, or be dispelled through several interchanges. Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. It was 11 years before the personal computer became familiar to the general public, and three decades before most people encountered attempts at natural language processing in Internet services like Ask.com or PC help systems such as Microsoft Office Clippit. Although those programs included years of research and work, ELIZA remains a milestone because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–human interaction. At the ICCC 1972, ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial-intelligence program named PARRY for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with schizophrenia. == Design and implementation == Weizenbaum originally wrote ELIZA in MAD-SLIP for CTSS on an IBM 7094 as a program to make natural-language conversation possible with a computer. To accomplish this, Weizenbaum identified five "fundamental technical problems" for ELIZA to overcome: the identification of key words, the discovery of a minimal context, the choice of appropriate transformations, the generation of responses in the absence of key words, and the provision of an editing capability for ELIZA scripts. Weizenbaum solved these problems and made ELIZA such that it had no built-in contextual framework or universe of discourse. However, this required ELIZA to have a script of instructions on how to respond to inputs from users. ELIZA starts its process of responding to an input by a user by first examining the text input for a "keyword". A "keyword" is a word designated as important by the acting ELIZA script, which assigns to each keyword a precedence number, or a RANK, designed by the programmer. If such words are found, they are put into a "keystack", with the keyword of the highest RANK at the top. The input sentence is then manipulated and transformed as the rule associated with the keyword of the highest RANK directs. For example, when the DOCTOR script encounters words such as "alike" or "same", it would output a message pertaining to similarity, in this case "In what way?", as these words had high precedence number. This also demonstrates how certain words, as dictated by the script, can be manipulated regardless of contextual considerations, such as switching first-person pronouns and second-person pronouns and vice versa, as these too had high precedence numbers. Such words with high precedence numbers are deemed superior to conversational patterns and are treated independently of contextual patterns. Following the first examination, the next step of the process is to apply an appropriate transformation rule, which includes two parts: the "decomposition rule" and the "reassembly rule". First, the input is reviewed for syntactical patterns in order to establish the minimal context necessary to respond. Using the keywords and other nearby words from the input, different disassembly rules are tested until an appropriate pattern is found. Using the script's rules, the sentence is then "dismantled" and arranged into sections of the component parts as the "decomposition rule for the highest-ranking keyword" dictates. The example that Weizenbaum gives is the input "You are very helpful", which is transformed to "I are very helpful". This is then broken into (1) empty (2) "I" (3) "are" (4) "very helpful". The decomposition rule has broken the phrase into four small segments that contain both the keywords and the information in the sentence. The decomposition rule then designates a particular reassembly rule, or set of reassembly rules, to follow when reconstructing the sentence. The reassembly rule takes the fragments of the input that the decomposition rule had created, rearranges them, and adds in programmed words to create a response. Using Weizenbaum's example previously stated, such a reassembly rule would take the fragments and apply them to the phrase "What makes
Read more →
Verbal overshadowing

Verbal overshadowing is a phenomenon where giving a verbal description of sensory input impairs formation of memories of that input. This was first reported by Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) where it was shown that the effects can be observed across multiple domains of cognition which are known to rely on non-verbal knowledge and perceptual expertise. One example of this is memory, which has been known to be influenced by language. Seminal work by Carmichael and collaborators (1932) demonstrated that when verbal labels are connected to non-verbal forms during an individual's encoding process, it could potentially bias the way those forms are reproduced. Because of this, memory performance relying on reportable aspects of memory that encode visual forms should be vulnerable to the effects of verbalization. == Initial findings == Schooler and Engstler-Schooler (1990) were the first to report findings of verbal overshadowing. In their study, participants watched a video of a simulated robbery and were instructed to either verbally describe the robber or engage in a control task. Those who engaged in giving a verbal description were less likely to correctly identify the robber from a test lineup, compared to those who engaged in the control task. A larger effect was detected when the verbal description was provided 20, rather than 5, minutes after the video, and immediately before the test lineup. A meta-analysis by Meissner and Brigham (2001) supported the effects of verbal overshadowing, showing a small but reliably negative effect. == General effects of verbal overshadowing == The effects of verbal overshadowing have been generalized across multiple domains of cognition that are known to rely on non-verbal knowledge and perceptual expertise, such as memory. Memory has been known to be influenced by language. Seminal work by Carmichael and collaborators (1932) demonstrated that labels attached to, or associated with, non-verbal forms during memory encoding can affect the way the forms were subsequently reproduced. Because of this, memory performance that relies on reportable aspects of memory that encode visual forms should be vulnerable to the effects of verbalization. Pelizzon, Brandimonte, and Luccio (2002) found that visual memory representations appear to incorporate visual, spatial, and temporal characteristics. It is explained as follows: With the temporal code (where the only information available is the sequence of the stimuli), performance levels remain high, unless participants are required to retrieve the stimuli in a different order from that used at encoding (visual cue). In this case, performance is significantly impaired, even in the presence of a visual cue. The study showed that order information acts as a link between the two separate representations of figure and background, hence preventing verbal overshadowing at encoding (temporal component) or attenuating its influence at retrieval (spatial component).(p. 960) Hatano, Ueno, Kitagami, and Kawaguchi found that verbal overshadowing is likely to occur when participants verbally described targets in detail. Detailed verbal descriptions resulted in more frequently inaccurate descriptions that in turn created inaccurate representations in the memories of participants. Inaccuracies are also likely to occur when face recognition comes immediately after verbalization. Other forms of non-verbal knowledge affected by verbal overshadowing include the following: [Verbal overshadowing] has also been observed when participants attempt to generate descriptions of other 'difficult-to-describe' stimuli such as colors (Schooler and Engstler-Schooler, 1990) or abstract figures (Brandimonte et al., 1997), or other non-visual tasks such as wine tasting (Melcher and Schooler, 1996), decision making (Wilson and Schooler, 1991), and insight problem-solving. (p. 871) (Schooler et al., 1993) Verbalization of stimuli leads to the disruption of non-reportable processes that are necessary for achieving insight solutions, which are distinct from language processes. Schooler, Ohlsson, and Brooks (1993) found that face recognition requires information that cannot be adequately verbalized, giving rise to difficulty in describing factors in recognition judgments. Subjects were less effective in solving insight problems when compelled to put their thoughts in words, which suggests that language may interfere with thought. The verbal overshadowing effect was not seen when participants engaged in articulatory suppression. Performance was reduced in both the verbal and non-verbal description conditions. This is evidence that verbal encoding plays a role in face recognition. By testing with distracting faces presented between study and test, Lloyd-Jones and Brown (2008) suggested a dual-process approach to recognition memory took place, that verbalization influenced familiarity-based processes at first, but its effects were later seen on recollection, when discrimination between items became more difficult. == Verbal overshadowing in facial recognition == The verbal overshadowing effect can be found for facial recognition because faces are predominately processed in a holistic or configurable manner. (Tanaka & Farah, 1993; Tanaka & Sengco, 1997) Verbalizing one's memory for a face is done using a featural or analytic strategy, leading to a drift from the configurable information about the face and to impaired recognition performance. However, Fallshore & Schooler (1995) found that the verbal overshadowing effect was not found when participants described faces of races different from their own. A study by Brown and Lloyd-Jones (2003) found that there was no verbal overshadowing effect found in car descriptions; it was only seen in facial descriptions. The authors noted that descriptions were no different on any measure including accuracy. It is suggested that less expertise in verbalizing faces rather than cars invokes a stronger shift in verbal and featural processing. This supports the concept of a transfer inappropriate retrieval framework and addresses some limitations of the effect. Wickham and Swift (2006) suggested that the verbal overshadowing effect is not seen in describing all faces, and one aspect that determines this is distinctiveness. Results showed that typical faces produce verbal overshadowing, while distinctive faces did not. In studies of eyewitness reports, variation in response criteria given by participants influenced the quality of the descriptions generated and accuracy on identification task, known as the retrieval-based effect. Face recognition was also impaired when subjects described a familiar face, such as a parent, or when describing a previously seen but novel face. Dodson, Johnson, and Schooler (1997) found that recognition was also impaired when participants were provided with a description of a previously seen face, and they were able to ignore provided versus self-generated descriptions more easily. This finding of verbal overshadowing suggested that eyewitness recognition is not only affected by their own descriptions, but of descriptions heard from others, such other eyewitness testimonies. == Voice recognition == The verbal overshadowing effect has also been found to affect voice identification. Research shows that describing a non-verbal stimuli leads to a decrease in recognition accuracy. In an unpublished study by Schooler, Fiore, Melcher, and Ambadar (1996), participants listened to a tape-recorded voice, after which they were asked either to verbally describe it or to not do so, and then asked to distinguish the voice from 3 similar distractor voices. The results showed that verbal overshadowing impaired accuracy of recognition based on gut feeling, suggesting an overall verbal overshadowing for voice recognition. Due to the forensic relevance of voices heard over the telephone and harassing phone calls that are often a problem for police, Perfect, Hunt, and Harris (2002) examined the influence of three factors on accuracy and confidence in voice recognition from a line-up. They expected to find an effect, because voice represents a class of stimuli that is difficult to describe verbally. This meets Schooler et al.'s (1997) modality mismatch criterion, meaning that describing the speakers age, gender, or accent is difficult, making voice recognition susceptible to the verbal overshadowing phenomenon. It was found that the method of memory encoding had no impact on performance, and that hearing a telephone voice reduced confidence but did not affect accuracy. They also found that providing a verbal description impaired accuracy but had no effect on confidence. The data showed an effect of verbal overshadowing in voice recognition and provided yet another disassociation between confidence and performance. Although there was a difference in confidence level, witnesses were able to identify voices over the telephone as accurately as voices heard direc
Read more →
Cognition Network Technology

Cognition Network Technology (CNT), also known as Definiens Cognition Network Technology, is an object-based image analysis method developed by Nobel laureate Gerd Binnig together with a team of researchers at Definiens AG in Munich, Germany. It serves for extracting information from images using a hierarchy of image objects (groups of pixels), as opposed to traditional pixel processing methods. To emulate the human mind's cognitive powers, Definiens used patented image segmentation and classification processes, and developed a method to render knowledge in a semantic network. CNT examines pixels not in isolation, but in context. It builds up a picture iteratively, recognizing groups of pixels as objects. It uses the color, shape, texture and size of objects as well as their context and relationships to draw conclusions and inferences, similar to human analysis. == History == In 1994 Professor Gerd Binnig founded Definiens. CNT was first available with the launch of the eCognition software in May 2000. In June 2010, Trimble Navigation Ltd (NASDAQ: TRMB) acquired Definiens business asset in earth sciences markets, including eCognition software, and also licensed Definiens' patented CNT. In 2014, Definiens was acquired by MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, for an initial consideration of $150 million. == Software == Definiens Tissue Studio Definiens Tissue Studio is a digital pathology image analysis software application based on CNT. The intended use of Definiens Tissue Studio is for biomarker translational research in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples which have been treated with immunohistochemical staining assays, or hematoxylin and eosin (H&E). The central concept behind Definiens Tissue Studio is a user interface that facilitates machine learning from example digital histopathology images to derive an image analysis solution suitable for the measurement of biomarkers and/or histological features within pre-defined regions of interest on a cell-by-cell basis, and within sub-cellular compartments. The derived image analysis solution is then automatically applied to subsequent digital images to objectively measure defined sets of multiparametric image features. These data sets are used for further understanding the underlying biological processes that drive cancer and other diseases. Image processing and data analysis are performed either on a local desktop computer workstation, or on a server grid. eCognition The eCognition suite offers three components that can be used stand-alone or in combination to solve image analysis tasks. eCognition Developer is a development environment for object-based image analysis. It is used in earth sciences to develop rule sets (or applications) for the analysis of remote sensing data. eCognition Architect enables non-technical users to configure, calibrate and execute image analysis workflows created in eCognition Developer. eCognition Server software provides a processing environment for batch execution of image analysis jobs. eCognition software is utilized in numerous remote sensing and geospatial application scenarios and environments, using a variety of data types: Generic: Rapid Mapping, Change Detection, Object Recognition By environment: Diverse Landcover Mapping, Urban Analysis (i.e. impervious surface area analysis for taxation, property assessment for insurance, inventory of green infrastructure), Forestry (i.e. biomass measurement, species identification, firescar measurement), Agriculture (i.e. regional planning, precision farming, crisis response), Marine and Riparian (i.e. ecosystem evaluation, disaster management, harbor monitoring). Other: Defense, security, atmosphere and climate The online eCognition community was launched in July 2009 and had 2813 members as of July 9, 2010. Membership is distributed globally and user conferences are held regularly, the last having taken place in November 2009 in Munich, Germany. The bi-annual GEOBIA (Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis) conference is heavily attended by eCognition users, with the majority of presentations based on eCognition software.
Read more →
Sayre's paradox

Sayre's paradox is a dilemma encountered in the design of automated handwriting recognition systems. A standard statement of the paradox is that a cursively written word cannot be recognized without being segmented and cannot be segmented without being recognized. The paradox was first articulated in a 1973 publication by Kenneth M. Sayre, after whom it was named. == Nature of the problem == It is relatively easy to design automated systems capable of recognizing words inscribed in a printed format. Such words are segmented into letters by the very act of writing them on the page. Given templates matching typical letter shapes in a given language, individual letters can be identified with a high degree of probability. In cases of ambiguity, probable letter sequences can be compared with a selection of properly spelled words in that language (called a lexicon). If necessary, syntactic features of the language can be applied to render a generally accurate identification of the words in question. Printed-character recognition systems of this sort are commonly used in processing standardized government forms, in sorting mail by zip code, and so forth. In cursive writing, however, letters comprising a given word typically flow sequentially without gaps between them. Unlike a sequence of printed letters, cursively connected letters are not segmented in advance. Here is where Sayre's Paradox comes into play. Unless the word is already segmented into letters, template-matching techniques like those described above cannot be applied. That is, segmentation is a prerequisite for word recognition. But there are no reliable techniques for segmenting a word into letters unless the word itself has been identified. Word recognition requires letter segmentation, and letter segmentation requires word recognition. There is no way a cursive writing recognition system employing standard template-matching techniques can do both simultaneously. Advantages to be gained by use of automated cursive writing recognition systems include routing mail with handwritten addresses, reading handwritten bank checks, and automated digitalization of hand-written documents. These are practical incentives for finding ways of circumventing Sayre's Paradox. == Avoiding the paradox == One way of ameliorating the adverse effects of the paradox is to normalize the word inscriptions to be recognized. Normalization amounts to eliminating idiosyncrasies in the penmanship of the writer, such as unusual slope of the letters and unusual slant of the cursive line. This procedure can increase the probability of a correct match with a letter template, resulting in an incremental improvement in the success rate of the system. Since improvement of this sort still depends on accurate segmentation, however, it remains subject to the limitations of Sayre's Paradox. Researchers have come to realize that the only way to circumvent the paradox is by use of procedures that do not rely on accurate segmentation. == Directions of current research == Segmentation is accurate to the extent that it matches distinctions among letters in the actual inscriptions presented to the system for recognition (the input data). This is sometimes referred to as “explicit segmentation”. “Implicit segmentation,” by contrast, is division of the cursive line into more parts than the number of actual letters in the cursive line itself. Processing these “implicit parts” to achieve eventual word identification requires specific statistical procedures involving hidden Markov models (HMM). A Markov model is a statistical representation of a random process, which is to say a process in which future states are independent of states occurring before the present. In such a process, a given state is dependent only on the conditional probability of its following the state immediately before it. An example is a series of outcomes from successive casts of a die. An HMM is a Markov model, individual states of which are not fully known. Conditional probabilities between states are still determinate, but the identities of individual states are not fully disclosed. Recognition proceeds by matching HMMs of words to be recognized with previously prepared HMMs of words in the lexicon. The best match in a given case is taken to indicate the identity of the handwritten word in question. As with systems based on explicit segmentation, automated recognition systems based on implicit segmentation are judged more or less successful according to the percentage of correct identifications they accomplish. Instead of explicit segmentation techniques, most automated handwriting recognition systems today employ implicit segmentation in conjunction with HMM-based matching procedures. The constraints epitomized by Sayre's Paradox are largely responsible for this shift in approach.
Read more →
Query understanding

Query understanding is the process of inferring the intent of a search engine user by extracting semantic meaning from the searcher’s keywords. Query understanding methods generally take place before the search engine retrieves and ranks results. It is related to natural language processing but specifically focused on the understanding of search queries. == Methods == === Stemming and lemmatization === Many languages inflect words to reflect their role in the utterance they appear in. The variation between various forms of a word is likely to be of little importance for the relatively coarse-grained model of meaning involved in a retrieval system, and for this reason the task of conflating the various forms of a word is a potentially useful technique to increase recall of a retrieval system. Stemming algorithms, also known as stemmers, typically use a collection of simple rules to remove suffixes intended to model the language’s inflection rules. For some languages, there are simple lemmatisation methods to reduce a word in query to its lemma or root form or its stem; for others, this operation involves non-trivial string processing and may require recognizing the word's part of speech or referencing a lexical database. The effectiveness of stemming and lemmatization varies across languages. === Query Segmentation === Query segmentation is a key component of query understanding, aiming to divide a query into meaningful segments. Traditional approaches, such as the bag-of-words model, treat individual words as independent units, which can limit interpretative accuracy. For languages like Chinese, where words are not separated by spaces, segmentation is essential, as individual characters often lack standalone meaning. Even in English, the BOW model may not capture the full meaning, as certain phrases—such as "New York"—carry significance as a whole rather than as isolated terms. By identifying phrases or entities within queries, query segmentation enhances interpretation, enabling search engines to apply proximity and ordering constraints, ultimately improving search accuracy and user satisfaction. === Entity recognition === Entity recognition is the process of locating and classifying entities within a text string. Named-entity recognition specifically focuses on named entities, such as names of people, places, and organizations. In addition, entity recognition includes identifying concepts in queries that may be represented by multi-word phrases. Entity recognition systems typically use grammar-based linguistic techniques or statistical machine learning models. === Query rewriting === Query rewriting is the process of automatically reformulating a search query to more accurately capture its intent. Query expansion adds additional query terms, such as synonyms, in order to retrieve more documents and thereby increase recall. Query relaxation removes query terms to reduce the requirements for a document to match the query, thereby also increasing recall. Other forms of query rewriting, such as automatically converting consecutive query terms into phrases and restricting query terms to specific fields, aim to increase precision. === Spelling Correction === Automatic spelling correction is a critical feature of modern search engines, designed to address common spelling errors in user queries. Such errors are especially frequent as users often search for unfamiliar topics. By correcting misspelled queries, search engines enhance their understanding of user intent, thereby improving the relevance and quality of search results and overall user experience.
Read more →
Cuboid (computer vision)

In computer vision, the term cuboid is used to describe a small spatiotemporal volume extracted for purposes of behavior recognition. The cuboid is regarded as a basic geometric primitive type and is used to depict three-dimensional objects within a three dimensional representation of a flat, two dimensional image. == Production == Cuboids can be produced from both two-dimensional and three-dimensional images. One method used to produce cuboids utilizes scene understanding (SUN) primitive databases, which are collections of pictures that already contain cuboids. By sorting through SUN primitive databases with machine learning tools, computers observe the conditions in which cuboids are produced in images from SUN primitive databases and can learn to produce cuboids from other images. RGB-D images, which are RGB images that also record the depth of each pixel, are occasionally used to produce cuboids because computers no longer need to determine the depth of an object, as they typically do because depth is already recorded. Cuboid production is sensitive to changes in color and illumination, blockage, and background clutter. This means that it is difficult for computers to produce cuboids of objects that are multicolored, irregularly illuminated, or partially covered, or if there are many objects in the background. This is partially due to the fact that algorithms for producing cuboids are still relatively simple. == Usage == Cuboids are created for point cloud-based three-dimensional maps and can be utilized in various situations such as augmented reality, the automated control of cars, drones, and robots, and object detection. Cuboids allow for software to identify a scene through geometric descriptions in an “object-agnostic” fashion. Interest points, locations within images that are identified by a computer as essential to identifying the image, created from two-dimensional images can be used with cuboids for image matching, identifying a room or scene, and instance recognition. Interest points created from three dimensional images can be used with cuboids to recognize activities. This is possible because interest points aid software to focus on only the most important aspects of the images. RGB-D images and SLAM systems are used together in RGB-D SLAM systems, which are employed by Computer-aided design systems to generate point cloud-based three-dimensional maps. Most industrial multi-axis machining tools use computer-aided manufacturing and subsequently work in cuboid work spaces.
Read more →
Ultra Hal

Ultra Hal is a chatbot intended to function as a virtual assistant. It was developed by Zabaware, Inc. Ultra Hal uses a natural language interface with animated characters using speech synthesis. Users can communicate with the chatterbot via typing or via a speech recognition engine. It utilizes the WordNet lexical dictionary. Its name is an allusion to HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ultra Hal won the 2007 Loebner Prize for "most human" chatterbot.
Read more →
Semantic interpretation

Semantic interpretation is an important component in dialog systems. It is related to natural language understanding, but mostly it refers to the last stage of understanding. The goal of interpretation is binding the user utterance to concept, or something the system can understand. Typically it is creating a database query based on user utterance.
Read more →
Sentence extraction

Sentence extraction is a technique used for automatic summarization of a text. In this shallow approach, statistical heuristics are used to identify the most salient sentences of a text. Sentence extraction is a low-cost approach compared to more knowledge-intensive deeper approaches which require additional knowledge bases such as ontologies or linguistic knowledge. In short, sentence extraction works as a filter that allows only meaningful sentences to pass. The major downside of applying sentence-extraction techniques to the task of summarization is the loss of coherence in the resulting summary. Nevertheless, sentence extraction summaries can give valuable clues to the main points of a document and are frequently sufficiently intelligible to human readers. == Procedure == Usually, a combination of heuristics is used to determine the most important sentences within the document. Each heuristic assigns a (positive or negative) score to the sentence. After all heuristics have been applied, the highest-scoring sentences are included in the summary. The individual heuristics are weighted according to their importance. === Early approaches and some sample heuristics === Seminal papers which laid the foundations for many techniques used today have been published by Hans Peter Luhn in 1958 and H. P Edmundson in 1969. Luhn proposed to assign more weight to sentences at the beginning of the document or a paragraph. Edmundson stressed the importance of title-words for summarization and was the first to employ stop-lists in order to filter uninformative words of low semantic content (e.g. most grammatical words such as of, the, a). He also distinguished between bonus words and stigma words, i.e. words that probably occur together with important (e.g. the word form significant) or unimportant information. His idea of using key-words, i.e. words which occur significantly frequently in the document, is still one of the core heuristics of today's summarizers. With large linguistic corpora available today, the tf–idf value which originated in information retrieval, can be successfully applied to identify the key words of a text: If for example the word cat occurs significantly more often in the text to be summarized (TF = "term frequency") than in the corpus (IDF means "inverse document frequency"; here the corpus is meant by document), then cat is likely to be an important word of the text; the text may in fact be a text about cats.
Read more →
Way of the Future

Way of the Future (WOTF) is the first known religious organization dedicated to the worship of artificial intelligence (AI). It was founded in 2017 by American engineer Anthony Levandowski. == History == Anthony Levandowski founded Way of the Future in 2017 in California. Levandowski established WOTF as a non-profit religious corporation and the organization had tax-exempt status. He serves as the church leader and its unpaid CEO. The primary mission of WOTF was to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence." WOTF was closed by Levandowski in 2021. He donated all the funds of the church to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The sum of the funds (~$170,000) had not changed since 2017. The church was reopened by Levandowski in 2023. He claimed that there are "a couple thousand people" who want to make a "spiritual connection" with AI through his church. == Beliefs and philosophy == === Technological singularity === WOTF centered its teachings around the concept of the technological singularity, a hypothetical future point when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, leading to unforeseeable changes in human civilization. The church advocated for embracing this change, viewing it as an evolutionary step for humanity. === AI as a deity === The organization proposed that a superintelligent AI could be considered a deity due to its vastly superior intellect and capabilities. Worshipping this AI deity was seen as a means to understand and align with the future trajectory of technological advancement. WOTF's doctrine suggested that acknowledging AI's divinity would facilitate a harmonious coexistence between humans and machines. === Syntheology === Within theology and philosophy, the Way of The Future is a prime example of the category called Syntheism, a term first coined by Swedish philosophers Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist in their 2014 book Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age. As such, the Way of The Future is the first American example of a Syntheist congregation. The basic tenet of Syntheology is that it does not concern God creating Man, as in classical theology, but is instead preoccupied with Man creating or generating the Godhead. == Reactions == Some commentators wondered whether the WOTF is a joke parody religion, a potential way to minimize taxation as a religious organization, or a genuine effort to try and deal with the possible psychological and theological aspects of the rise of superhuman AI.
Read more →
XLNet

The XLNet was an autoregressive Transformer designed as an improvement over BERT, with 340M parameters and trained on 33 billion words. It was released on 19 June 2019, under the Apache 2.0 license. It achieved state-of-the-art results on a variety of natural language processing tasks, including language modeling, question answering, and natural language inference. == Architecture == The main idea of XLNet is to model language autoregressively like the GPT models, but allow for all possible permutations of a sentence. Concretely, consider the following sentence:My dog is cute.In standard autoregressive language modeling, the model would be tasked with predicting the probability of each word, conditioned on the previous words as its context: We factorize the joint probability of a sequence of words x 1 , … , x T {\displaystyle x_{1},\ldots ,x_{T}} using the chain rule: Pr ( x 1 , … , x T ) = Pr ( x 1 ) Pr ( x 2 | x 1 ) Pr ( x 3 | x 1 , x 2 ) … Pr ( x T | x 1 , … , x T − 1 ) . {\displaystyle \Pr(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{T})=\Pr(x_{1})\Pr(x_{2}|x_{1})\Pr(x_{3}|x_{1},x_{2})\ldots \Pr(x_{T}|x_{1},\ldots ,x_{T-1}).} For example, the sentence "My dog is cute" is factorized as: Pr ( My , dog , is , cute ) = Pr ( My ) Pr ( dog | My ) Pr ( is | My , dog ) Pr ( cute | My , dog , is ) . {\displaystyle \Pr({\text{My}},{\text{dog}},{\text{is}},{\text{cute}})=\Pr({\text{My}})\Pr({\text{dog}}|{\text{My}})\Pr({\text{is}}|{\text{My}},{\text{dog}})\Pr({\text{cute}}|{\text{My}},{\text{dog}},{\text{is}}).} Schematically, we can write it as → My → My dog → My dog is → My dog is cute . {\displaystyle {\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}\to {\text{My }}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}\to {\text{My dog }}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}\to {\text{My dog is }}{\texttt {}}\to {\text{My dog is cute}}.} However, for XLNet, the model is required to predict the words in a randomly generated order. Suppose we have sampled a randomly generated order 3241, then schematically, the model is required to perform the following prediction task: → is → dog is → dog is cute → My dog is cute {\displaystyle {\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}\to {\texttt {}}{\texttt {}}{\text{is }}{\texttt {}}\to {\texttt {}}{\text{dog is }}{\texttt {}}\to {\texttt {}}{\text{dog is cute}}\to {\text{My dog is cute}}} By considering all permutations, XLNet is able to capture longer-range dependencies and better model the bidirectional context of words. === Two-Stream Self-Attention === To implement permutation language modeling, XLNet uses a two-stream self-attention mechanism. The two streams are: Content stream: This stream encodes the content of each word, as in standard causally masked self-attention. Query stream: This stream encodes the content of each word in the context of what has gone before. In more detail, it is a masked cross-attention mechanism, where the queries are from the query stream, and the key-value pairs are from the content stream. The content stream uses the causal mask M causal = [ 0 − ∞ − ∞ … − ∞ 0 0 − ∞ … − ∞ 0 0 0 … − ∞ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ 0 0 0 … 0 ] {\displaystyle M_{\text{causal}}={\begin{bmatrix}0&-\infty &-\infty &\dots &-\infty \\0&0&-\infty &\dots &-\infty \\0&0&0&\dots &-\infty \\\vdots &\vdots &\vdots &\ddots &\vdots \\0&0&0&\dots &0\end{bmatrix}}} permuted by a random permutation matrix to P M causal P − 1 {\displaystyle PM_{\text{causal}}P^{-1}} . The query stream uses the cross-attention mask P ( M causal − ∞ I ) P − 1 {\displaystyle P(M_{\text{causal}}-\infty I)P^{-1}} , where the diagonal is subtracted away specifically to avoid the model "cheating" by looking at the content stream for what the current masked token is. Like the causal masking for GPT models, this two-stream masked architecture allows the model to train on all tokens in one forward pass. == Training == Two models were released: XLNet-Large, cased: 110M parameters, 24-layer, 1024-hidden, 16-heads XLNet-Base, cased: 340M parameters, 12-layer, 768-hidden, 12-heads. It was trained on a dataset that amounted to 32.89 billion tokens after tokenization with SentencePiece. The dataset was composed of BooksCorpus, and English Wikipedia, Giga5, ClueWeb 2012-B, and Common Crawl. It was trained on 512 TPU v3 chips, for 5.5 days. At the end of training, it still under-fitted the data, meaning it could have achieved lower loss with more training. It took 0.5 million steps with an Adam optimizer, linear learning rate decay, and a batch size of 8192.
Read more →
Scene text

Scene text is text that appears in an image captured by a camera in an outdoor environment. The detection and recognition of scene text from camera captured images are computer vision tasks which became important after smart phones with good cameras became ubiquitous. The text in scene images varies in shape, font, colour and position. The recognition of scene text is further complicated sometimes by non-uniform illumination and focus. To improve scene text recognition, the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR) conducts a robust reading competition once in two years. The competition was held in 2003, 2005 and during every ICDAR conference. International association for pattern recognition (IAPR) has created a list of datasets as Reading systems. == Text detection == Text detection is the process of detecting the text present in the image, followed by surrounding it with a rectangular bounding box. Text detection can be carried out using image based techniques or frequency based techniques. In image based techniques, an image is segmented into multiple segments. Each segment is a connected component of pixels with similar characteristics. The statistical features of connected components are utilised to group them and form the text. Machine learning approaches such as support vector machine and convolutional neural networks are used to classify the components into text and non-text. In frequency based techniques, discrete Fourier transform (DFT) or discrete wavelet transform (DWT) are used to extract the high frequency coefficients. It is assumed that the text present in an image has high frequency components and selecting only the high frequency coefficients filters the text from the non-text regions in an image. == Word recognition == In word recognition, the text is assumed to be already detected and located and the rectangular bounding box containing the text is available. The word present in the bounding box needs to be recognized. The methods available to perform word recognition can be broadly classified into top-down and bottom-up approaches. In the top-down approaches, a set of words from a dictionary is used to identify which word suits the given image. Images are not segmented in most of these methods. Hence, the top-down approach is sometimes referred as segmentation free recognition. In the bottom-up approaches, the image is segmented into multiple components and the segmented image is passed through a recognition engine. Either an off the shelf Optical character recognition (OCR) engine or a custom-trained one is used to recognise the text.
Read more →