CaptionBot: Microsoft's new AI can describe what's in your pictures

The program is suprisingly good at captioning pictures - most of the time

CaptionBot uses a number of complex programs to analyse and caption images (Microsoft)

Microsoft has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of analysing and describing pictures automatically.

The program, now available to try on the company's website, has been named CaptionBot by the Microsoft Cognitive Services team, and it works surprisingly well.

Users can upload any image to CaptionBot and have it return a description in seconds. It manages this by using image and face analysing programs, as well as a language processor which returns descriptions in understandable English.

The program isn't entirely spot-on all the time, but it's generally close enough to be impressive.

CaptionBot is similar to previous Microsoft AI programs, like 'How Old Do I Look?' and 'What Dog?', both of which used similar technology.

Image captioning software is nothing new, but the way Microsoft has made the program public gives everyone a chance to see how it works.

CaptionBot should get more accurate over time - users can rate how well it did at captioning pictures on a one-to-five scale, and it will slowly 'learn' to identify different elements as it gets fed more content.

A word of warning - Microsoft says it will hold on to all images uploaded to CaptionBot, in order to improve its capabilities in future. However, it insists it won't record any personal information about users.