Be My Eyes — Denmark's Free Volunteer-and-AI Visual Assistance App for Blind and Low-Vision People

Be My Eyes is a Danish mobile app launched in 2015, founded by Hans Jørgen Wiberg and Christian Erfurt, that connects blind and low-vision users with sighted volunteers through a live video call for everyday visual tasks. It is free to blind and low-vision users; revenue comes from corporate helpdesk routing, including partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Hilton and Tesco, and it raised a USD 2.8 million Series A in February 2020.
In March 2023 it introduced Be My AI, built on OpenAI's GPT-4, which describes photos on request. Wikipedia reports 1 million sessions within two weeks of the open beta and availability in over 180 languages. An August 2024 Lewis Insight article reports about 2 million images processed per month, 19,000 beta testers, a target response time under five seconds against about nine seconds typical, and corporate customers reporting resolution rates of up to 70%. User and volunteer counts vary by source and date: Wikipedia gives over 9 million volunteers and over 900,000 users in its infobox (and a later figure of 10 million and 1 million), while the 2024 article gives 680,000 users and 7.5 million volunteers.
Limits and cautions: a 2016 survey of 30 blind users found the app supported a range of daily tasks, but no independent study of Be My AI accuracy was found. Wikipedia records criticism of insufficient data protection that allowed data to be passed to third parties; LLM face-description restrictions and unverified video features remain open issues. Figures are company- or press-reported.

Read the full analysis: https://lewisinsight.com/2024/08/be-my-eyes-creating-a-more-accessible-world-with-ai/