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Models / Embedded Text Detection

Embedded Text Detection

Table of contents

Overview

The text detection API can help you determine if an image contains natural text or artificial (embedded) text.

boxes showing natural text found on a woman's shirt and artificial text added through post-processing
Image with natural text and artificial text

The text detection will not act upon the actual text content. If you need to analyze the text content itself (such as to detect profanity, email addresses, phone number etc..) please use the Text Moderation for Image model.

Principles

The text detection does not use any image meta-data to determine if text is present in an image. The file extension, the meta-data or the name will not influence the result. The classification is made using only the pixel content of the image.

The model works for a host of different alphabets: latin, chinese, japanese, korean, arabic, hebrew, hindi...

latin script
Latin
hebrew script
Hebrew
indian scripts
Hindi

Use-cases

  • Require that users submit or upload images without artificial text
  • Hide ads that have been artificially added
  • Filter images containing personal information such as phone numbers, email adresses or usernames
  • Detect watermarks

Limitations

  • Texts smaller than 5% of the width or height of the image are not detected.

Natural text

The returned value is between 0 and 1, images with a natural text value closer to 1 will contain natural text while images with a natural text value closer to 0 will not contain natural text.

street scene with natural text
Natural text value 0.99562

Artificial text

The returned value is between 0 and 1, images with an artificial text value closer to 1 will contain artificial text while images with an artificial text value closer to 0 will not contain artificial text.

A quote has been added to this landscape image
Artificial text value 0.98049

Boxes

The values returned (x1, x2, y1, y2) help locate the texts present in the image.

For each box there you get a label that indicates the type of text (text-natural or text-artificial)

Box showing natural text found in an athletics picture

Use the model

If you haven't already, create an account to get your own API keys.

Detect text in an image

Let's say you want to moderate the following image:

photo of a girl with a phone number superimposed

You can either upload a public URL to the image, or upload the raw binary image. Here's how to proceed if you choose to share the image's public URL:


curl -X GET -G 'https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/check.json' \
    -d 'models=text' \
    -d 'api_user={api_user}&api_secret={api_secret}' \
    --data-urlencode 'url=https://sightengine.com/assets/img/examples/example2.jpg'


# this example uses requests
import requests
import json

params = {
  'url': 'https://sightengine.com/assets/img/examples/example2.jpg',
  'models': 'text',
  'api_user': '{api_user}',
  'api_secret': '{api_secret}'
}
r = requests.get('https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/check.json', params=params)

output = json.loads(r.text)


$params = array(
  'url' =>  'https://sightengine.com/assets/img/examples/example2.jpg',
  'models' => 'text',
  'api_user' => '{api_user}',
  'api_secret' => '{api_secret}',
);

// this example uses cURL
$ch = curl_init('https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/check.json?'.http_build_query($params));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$output = json_decode($response, true);


// this example uses axios
const axios = require('axios');

axios.get('https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/check.json', {
  params: {
    'url': 'https://sightengine.com/assets/img/examples/example2.jpg',
    'models': 'text',
    'api_user': '{api_user}',
    'api_secret': '{api_secret}',
  }
})
.then(function (response) {
  // on success: handle response
  console.log(response.data);
})
.catch(function (error) {
  // handle error
  if (error.response) console.log(error.response.data);
  else console.log(error.message);
});

The API will then return a JSON response:

            
            
{
    "status": "success",
    "request": {
        "id": "req_22Qd0gUNmRH4GCYLvYtN6",
        "timestamp": 1512483673.1405,
        "operations": 1
    },
    "text": {
        "has_artificial": 0.99932,
        "has_natural": 0.19986,
        "boxes": [
            {
                "x1": 0.18466,
                "y1": 0.01757,
                "x2": 0.8555,
                "y2": 0.244,
                "label": "text-artificial"
            }
        ]
    },
    "media": {
        "id": "med_22Qdfb5s97w8EDuY7Yfjp",
        "uri": "https://sightengine.com/assets/img/examples/text1-1200.jpg"
    }
}
            
        

Any other needs?

See our full list of Image/Video models for details on other filters and checks you can run on your images and videos. You might also want to check our Text models to moderate text-based content: messages, reviews, comments, usernames...

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