Imagine walking through a neighborhood park and spotting a beautifully vibrant flower, or noticing a strange insect crawling on your patio. If you want to know exactly what species it is so you can buy seeds for your garden (or know if the bug is dangerous), you do not need to download a sketchy, ad-filled third-party identification app. Apple has built a highly advanced machine-learning feature called “Visual Look Up” directly into the iPhone’s core operating system.
How to Use Visual Look Up
The key to this feature is taking a clear, well-lit photograph. The iPhone’s artificial intelligence needs to see the distinct shapes of the petals or leaves to run a successful database query.
- Open the standard Camera app on your iPhone.
- Take a clear, focused picture of the plant, flower, insect, or animal you want to identify. Get as close as possible so the subject fills the frame.
- Open the Photos app and tap on the picture you just took to view it in full screen.
- Look closely at the row of icons at the very bottom of the screen. Locate the Info button (the lowercase ‘i’ inside a circle).
Reading the AI Results
If the iPhone’s neural engine successfully recognizes a subject in the photo, that ‘i’ icon will magically change. Instead of a plain circle, it will gain a sparkle symbol (two tiny stars) next to it.
- Tap the sparkling Info button (or simply swipe your finger straight up on the photograph itself).
- A menu will slide up from the bottom of the screen. Directly beneath the date and time, you will see a large button that says something like Look Up – Plant, Look Up – Bug, or Look Up – Dog.
- Tap that button.
Siri Knowledge will instantly generate a card on your screen. It will display the most likely scientific and common names for the plant, provide a brief encyclopedia description, and show a gallery of visually similar web images so you can verify that the AI made a correct match.