Here is something new for you - the Is it new? AI scan tool. It is a feature I thought would be neat to build, where instead of you reaching out to me to see if this or that is a new Google, Bing, etc search feature, you can upload a screenshot, add some descriptive text and then have the AI figure out if it is new.
You can access the tool at seroundtable.com/is-it-new and give it a try. I had to add a "paywall" of sorts to it, because it is not cheap to run (about 7 cents per run). So I don't want bots running it over and over again. So the paywall is you enter your email and get a code, which also signs you up to my email newsletter (you can unsubscribe whenever you want).
I was joking around with the RustyBrick team about this idea and two of the RB developers were like, sure we can build that. So I said, go ahead. More on how it works on the backend later but here is how the frontend works.
You upload a screenshot, add a description, and you can even highlight the portion of the screenshot that you want to know about. Kind of like Google circle to search...
Then the AI will read the image, classify it and determine what to match on:
It will then scan all the non-hero images in my stories from the past 23 years and see if any match:
We ran a process where AI went through all the images on this site, built an index of those images, to make the matching a bit faster and a lot cheaper going forward. This actually runs daily for new stories to be added to the index.
Then it will find the results that match best:
You can even use a form to send me your findings, so I can manually review it:
On the backend, I store all the images uploaded so I can debug it. We actually run several AI models and I can toggle between them to see what works best. We did a few weeks of testing and the truth is, I can continue to tweak and improve it, but I wanted to get it out in the real world to see how you all use it and what needs to be tweaked.
It is not perfect but it is a pretty cool concept.
Let me know your thoughts - and yes, I limited how many scans you can do per day. And if too many of you use it in a day, it is also capped and will give you a notice.
For a bit more technical view, see [the RustyBrick post](https://www.rustybrick.com/AI-Powered-Screenshot-Scan-Similarity-Tool-265.html).
Forum discussion at [X](https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2112149590187073976).