AI Glossary Term
What does “Computer Vision” mean?
The branch of AI that extracts meaning from images and video.
How Computer Vision works
Example
A phone's photo app detects faces to focus the camera, and a farm drone flags crop rows that look dry. Both turn pixels into labels or locations that software can act on.
Why it matters
Computer vision lets software work with the visual world, from medical scans to factory inspection. Errors in these systems can have physical consequences, so testing on realistic images matters.
Common questions
What tasks does computer vision cover?
Image classification, object detection, segmentation, face and text recognition, and tracking motion in video.
How do computers see images?
As grids of numbers. Models learn patterns in those numbers that correspond to things people recognize.
Where does computer vision struggle?
Unusual lighting, angles, or subjects not covered in training data can cause mistakes, and some models can be fooled by small altered images.