Converting images to text – ChatGPT Tips #1

Tip - converting images to textRay Poynter, 21 May 2024

In this tip I show how ChatGPT can convert the text in an image into text you an work with.

A couple of weeks ago, I faced an interesting challenge. I had a presentation full of screenshots. I had captured the series of steps I had taken and put them in PowerPoint as JPEG image files. This was fine for my presentation in English.

However, with two Japanese colleagues, we needed to write them out in Japanese for a presentation to a Japanese audience. It would have been an awful process to type each one in Japanese. Also, this process would not allow the team to use a translation tool (such as Deepl) to give a first pass at the translations.

So, I uploaded a jpg to ChatGPT (using the paperclip*) and asked ChatGPT to create a plain text document from the image. ChatGPT did that and gave me a link to download the text file. I then uploaded the rest of the images and just typed “same again” for each one.

The files it produced were not perfect; there were some errors in things like punctuation, but I would say they were over 95% perfect. Since this emergency use of ChatGPT, I have asked it to convert many files, including PDF files, to text to avoid cases where I would have re-typed things (for example, when I want to quote and cite things).

*Uploading files: If you want to upload a file to ChatGPT, use the paperclip. Click on the paperclip, and ChatGPT will ask you which file to upload.

ChatGPT and the paperclip

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