50

Chrome will soon automatically OCR PDFs(www.androidpolice.com)

posted
by
Avatar
ray@lemmy.ml
in
Avatar
technology@beehaw.org
12 comments
hidereport
Sort:
HotTopControversialNewOld
Avatar
Hirom@beehaw.org
24 points

Will Chrome send all your PDF/images/browser history to Google cloud to provide that service?

Or will the processing be completely local to preserve privacy?

permalink
report
reply
Avatar
zerofatorial@lemmy.pt
12 points

Honestly if they said it would be local, would you trust them?

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
lowleveldata@programming.dev
28 points
*

You already knew the answer

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
Hirom@beehaw.org
11 points

Yes, but it’s sad this isn’t even addressed in press coverage.

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
a_statistician@programming.dev
8 points

This is just ensuring that companies are forced to blacklist Chrome if they want their secrets to stay secret. It’s already happened at my partners workplace (power industry, federal regulations on security) - hilariously, all google cloud services are blocked, but Bing is fine (w/ automatic ChatGPT integration).

It will be very interesting to see how companies handle this type of practice in the long run.

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
u_tamtam@programming.dev
4 points

And I’m so happy to see Firefox doing the exact opposite, with the recent inclusion of an offline translator. Though not as good as Google’s yet, it’s already usable and will only get better.

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
8 points

The issue with OCR’ing pdfs is typically that it doesn’t understand the document formatting. So if you’re reading a document which is formatted as two columns per page, the OCR text will be a mess.

permalink
report
reply
Avatar
DJDarren@beehaw.org
1 point

I have this trouble a lot when trying to digitise or refresh some of the older documentation our company uses. It often becomes easier to just recreate it, by the time you’ve fucked about trying to restore the formatting.

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
anon@lemm.ee
3 points

I’m willing to bet that given that most scientific papers are in that two format column, this ocr will take that into account or it’s dead on arrival.

permalink
report
parent
reply
Avatar
FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
4 points

So this is confined just to Chrome on ChromeOS it sounds like. I mean, ChromeOS was already an anti-privacy hellscape… anyway I sure hope this doesn’t spread beyond ChromeOS.

permalink
report
reply
Avatar
anteaters@feddit.de
4 points

So it’s all about gathering content for training AI these days, isn’t it?

permalink
report
reply

Technology

!technology@beehaw.org

Create post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Community stats

  • 2.8K

    Monthly active users

  • 3.4K

    Posts

  • 78K

    Comments

Community moderators