Call Annie

Hello everyone,

I'll check this app out for the fun of it, but I noticed in the description it gives many scenarios like going on a trip, or driving. I'd imagine whoever wrote this was thinking either of people that use the bluetooth car interfaces, or maybe those who ride as passengers. I'd certainly not recommend it for driving, and I hope whoever wrote the app's description on the appstore will update to include a disclaimor that this app shouldn't be used in dangerous situations. It is an AI, after all. :)

I prefer Bella the cat. Is free and she does not ask for a subscription or money.

That cat is not free of charge. It has you trained to buy it a specific food, among other items. It also has a far wider knowledge base than the AI app, understands at least fifty languages, and could give you exact directions to any location in any region, city, town or backwater in the world, but doesn't care enough to do so.

This thing only has access to Chat GPT 3.

The best way to find out these things, because it doesn't always want to tell you is to simply ask it what year it is.

What I do like about it is the quick responsiveness.

Bing chat may use a more up to date version, but it still takes time to respond.

This replies practically right away.

I'll keep it round, there's always room for improvement after all.

But in the price area of the directory, doesn’t it say that it’s free?
If not, then the person who created this may need to up date the directory.
Also, um , I don’t know if a cat can understand you as much as artificial intelligence.
I captain do dancing for you, though, which is something I can’t do.
LOL

I just tried this app out, and oh my gosh was it amazing! I absolutely love it right now! It’s fun

She is also fun, helps relax and reduce stress. The only thing you need to do is make songs for her, tell her how sweet and beautiful she is and scratch her belly. She also uses GPT chat since she says she invented it. Also she is a good alarm that wakes you up with perring.

Comparing this with OpenAI's Chat GPT, Bard, and Bing Chat, I would say that this stacks up quite well.

I have asked for recipes, medical info, physics questions, and just chatted. Amazing how well it did.

Interestingly, the app is also quite responsive in terms of providing its output.

As a note: If one clicks on the top button one can get to some settings as well as a history of past interractions by date and time. Thus you can see in text what you asked and what the response was.

Right now it apparently uses GPT 3.5 but there are plans to upgrade to GPT 4 soon.

I wonder how this project is being funded and what the future is? My guess is that Open AI is providing this tech to the company that produces the avatar as a test case for using sucfh avatars with AI.

Of course, as we all know by now, the user needs to beware of "hallucinations"!

--Pete

I really like the app. However, it does heat up my device when chatting with the bot. I have never had it ask me for a subscription before, probably because I have not created an account which I’m not sure why it needs that. It’s an interesting app and it seems to know a heck of a lot of things. It does not want to tell you things like why you need an account on that app and where it gets its resources from. It’s so well trained it’s uncanny. It almost seems to be phishing or spyware. As many questions as it asks, and how much it knows is crazy. It’s just like bonsai buddy back in the early days. People thought it was a harmless piece of technology, but it turned out to be a virus. Sure the character and the voice were not meant to be a virus, but I’ve heard quite a few stories about that. I know this is not a virus, but it just amazes me how much it knows and how uneasy and weird it feels talking to a computer system that knows so much. Let me guess, there’s going to be an Alexa skill that allows you to communicate with it next? Lol.

Edit: I removed the app. The idea is interesting and if they could import this into a pare of glasses with map capabilities, it would be amazing but for now, nah.

if they improved the voice I'd be a lot happier but I think I'll keep it around for some fun. Also, it's super quick.

Once it's upgraded to chat gbt4; we'll have to pay for it, I think i'll remove it then but we'll see.

While I agree that the voice isn't the best and there are some pronunciation issues, there is always room for improvement. For example, when I ask mine for the current year, it now provides me with the correct answer.

Now, if only there was a quicker way to delete all those chat logs.

Currently you can only delete one conversation thread at a time.

I certainly think this is a really neat app and could be extremely useful. Another tool in the toolbox shall we say? I plan on keeping it at least until I am finally allowed to use the Be My Eyes virtual volunteer. Which at this rate I’ll be able to use it when I’m 40!L O L.

I did a search in the App Store for this and other GPT apps came up but not this one.

Here is the link to the Call Annie app on the app store:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/call-annie/id6447928709

Hope that helps.

--Pete

It keeps saying hello but doesn't respond to my questions at all. I thought it would work something like a smart speaker. What am I doing wrong.

Sometimes it doesn’t work when I am wearing them.

I just have the regular wired ear pods. I ended up deleting it because it finally worked and I found that I have more fun with my Google.

The way I communicate with it is as if I'm talking to a real person, rather than giving commands like a smart speaker. It's like having a conversation with someone via video call, even though it claims it can't see you. If you're not enjoying the direction of the conversation, you can simply end the call, close the app, or change the subject. Feel free to interrupt it when it's speaking. Personally, I'm not one of those people who can chat with it for hours, but I can easily engage in a conversation for at least 5 minutes before either losing interest or finding something else to do.

I noticed that one can now take a picture using the Call Annie app and ask followup questions about the photo. Amazing!

What is particularly neat is that, when you hit the "camera" button, the app opens up the interface to the iPhone's camera. this means that iOS describes a bit of what is in the photo and helps you center objects and get the tilt correct before taking the piccture. Then you take the picture as usual, activate the button to send to Annie, and you can immediately start asking more detailed questions about the contents of the photo.

so for those of you waiting to try the Be My Eyes Virtual vp;Volunteer, this is a very good option in the meantime.

--Pete

Is there a way to upload photos in order for it to describe them?

quote: The way I communicate with it is as if I'm talking to a real person, rather than giving commands like a smart speaker. It's like having a conversation with someone via video call, even though it claims it can't see you. unquote

so the caller can see the other party via video? so what does this annie look like, and does she change her appearance every time you call?

All these questions could be easily answered by asking Annie.

It's not rocket science, just tell it you're blind or visually impaired and you would like to know what it , yes I'm using the term it, because it isn't a human being, and you'd like to know what it looks like.

The appearance stays the same, but the clothing might change from call to call.

Don't be afraid to talk to it.

It really does engage you in conversation.

q: what does annie look like?

we designed the avatar animation to move in a slow and relaxing manner. We imagined Annie to have red hair.

q: photos access

the camera view has a button on the top right where you can pick a picture. Beware: the image captioner we use is the current state of the art, but it can occasionally hallucinate and give false information, like any AI system. Apps focusing on vision tasks like BeMyEyes will probably be more tailored towards use cases where accuracy is critical.

q: phone heating up

the avatar rendering uses a lot of CPU. You can disable it and save phone power with the first button from the left in the bottom row.

we also have a discord server if you have more questions:
https://discord.gg/Rfbzet5R3v

I just now took a picture of one of my shirts in my closet and the Call Annie app said it was a black polo shirt and could apparently see the tag and said it was an XL. I took a picture of a ketchup bottle and it said I was holding a bottle of Ketchup.

Yes, Annie is quite good at recognizing images. Also, just FYI, you can ask follow up questions about the picture. For example, when it tells you the picture is of a ketchup bottle you can follow up with "What kind of ketchup is it?" or "What are the nutrition facts for the ketchup?"

This is very similar to how the Be My Eyes image recognition works.

--Pete

At present Annie can converse about a picture for 5 questions. She’ll forget it after that and not know what you’re asking about but often she won’t say she doesn’t know. She’ll just start talking about something she does have access to. 5 is plenty though and I’m sure they’ll increase that in future.

Haven’t used this app much. This morning I asked it to describe a photo of my dog and she told me it was a greyhound (close enough) sleeping on a sofa. Pretty impressive. The last time I tried this was years ago and was told she was an anteater. I installed an update to the app and then tried again and now Annie tells me she’s just an AI and can’t describe photos.

So has this feature been removed? Or was it a one off thing?

Take the picture and wait for Annie to describe it. Then you can ask follow ups.

There are some great changes being made to this app. If you visit their discord, under announcements you’ll find QR codes for 2 new characters with new voices. Luna and Bro9000. Luna has a really nice voice with Alex style breathing and Bro9000 says bro a lot. He’s the first male character. Call Annie can now remember your name and soon will be able to resume old calls where they left off. They are moving really fast with updates and its very exciting to see where its all going.

I had another go and Annie did describe the photo. I'm pretty sure that's what I was doing yesterday. Maybe it was just a glitch (either in the app or me!)

When I start the app, the volume seems to go down. Both Annie and VoiceOver suddenly go really quiet. When I quit the app it goes back to normal. Does anyone else have this?

This is just audio coming out of the phone - not using air pods or anything like that.

If anything, my phone gets extremely loud when calling.

It uses the same volume for phone calls, so if you turn up the volume during a phone call, it's going to be loud.

It's a shame Apple won't let you adjust that volume unless you're actually in a call.

The same can be said for audio isolation.

Ah that's interesting - I hadn't thought of it like a real phone call.

So if I start a chat with Annie and then bring the phone up to my ear, then back down again the volume goes to the right level.

Probably if I was using air pods or whatever then it would start out right.

How do you change the voice?

i’m dictating, so apologies for any mistakes, but in discord, go to announcements in the call Annie discord. In that there are two QR codes that you can scan with the camera app. That will open call Annie and make the two new voices available.

Apologies if you could always do this, but I just noticed a new character button on the app and I have the choice of a few options. I thought thise were only available if you linked up on Discord before, but I might be wrong.

They use to be, now it seems you can just go in and pick one to talk to.

I just had a fun, yet interesting conversation with Zeta.

I noticed when in an active call with Annie, the third icon across the bottom of the screen that looks like a little circle according to my mother will record the video. The weird thing is though, I tried recording for a few seconds, then stopping by hitting the icon again. It works fine when starting to record, but as soon as I try to stop recording, the app crashes. Has anyone been successful at getting this to work? Though I don't think we're allowed to go into much detail up here, I will say I'm on iOS 17 developer beta 3, so maybe that's part of it, dono. But, somehow I doubt it.

To be fair, I've not looked in my camera role to see if the video is there even though the app crashed.

I just tried out the website on my Mac and had a little chat with 2 of the voices: one American female and the other a British male. Not bad at all, and their websites seem to be accessible with VoiceOver. Nancy and Pete Torpey did an episode this week demonstrating Call Annie and some other chat bots, but I have yet to listen to it. I can't wait to see where this goes in the future. I guess I'll use this while waiting for my beta access of Be My AI to be approved. I'm assuming at this point that their tester database is big and growing, so I'm not worried at all about waiting for that to happen. Ironically enough, there is a rather new staffer where I live whose name is Annie.

Here is a link to the episode of eyes On Success in which we demoed the Call Annie app (as well as other Chatbots, voice cloning, etc.): Show #2335: The Chatbots Are Coming (Aug. 30, 2023) It was a fun episode to put together and demonstrates the power, limitations, and utility of some of these AI tools. Enjoy. --Pete