Getting Started with GPT-4 Vision for Data Analysis

One of the many releases at OpenAI's Dev Day was the introduction of GPT-4 Vision or GPT-4V. As the documentation highlights:

Historically, language model systems have been limited by taking in a single input modality, text.

GPT-4V is a multimodal model that can take in both images and text and answer questions about them.

While there are many use cases of vision, in this article we'll focus on using it for data analysis, specifically analyzing and interpreting charts and graphs.

For this tool, we'll build a simple fronted using Streamlit that allows users to input either URLs of images of upload one or more images for analysis.

For example, let's go and upload this chart from Our World in Data on Computation used to train notable artificial intelligence systems and ask it to explain it for us.

...which gives us the following interpretation:

Not bad.

Setting Up the Environment

Now that we know what we're building, let's create a new Python Repl at Replit to host our Streamlit app.

• We start by importing streamlit, openai, base64, and os. Streamlit is used for the UI, OpenAI for accessing GPT-4 Vision, base64 for image handling, and os for environment variables.
• Next, you'll need to add your OPENAI_API_KEY to Secrets and setup the OpenAI client as follows:

import streamlit as st
from openai import OpenAI
import base64
import os

OPENAI_API_KEY = os.environ['OPENAI_API_KEY']
client = OpenAI(api_key=OPENAI_API_KEY)

Encoding Images to Base64

Next, when users upload images directly, we need to convert these images into a format that GPT-4 can understand, so let's write a function to encode our images with Base64, which is a common method for encoding binary data as text.

def encode_image(uploaded_file):
  return base64.b64encode(uploaded_file.getvalue()).decode('utf-8')

Analyzing Images with GPT-4 Vision

Next, let's create a function to analyze images using GPT-4 vision:

• The analyze_image function processes a list of images and a user's question, sending them to OpenAI's GPT-4 Vision model for analysis.
• It handles both URL-based and base64-encoded images, constructing the appropriate request format for the API.
• The function then sends this request and returns the model's response as output.

def analyze_image(image_data_list, question, is_url=False):
  messages = [{"role": "user", "content": [{"type": "text", "text": question}]}]
  
  for image_data in image_data_list:
    if is_url:
      messages[0]["content"].append({"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": image_data}})
    else:
      messages[0]["content"].append({"type": "image_url", "image_url": {"url": f"data:image/jpeg;base64,{image_data}"}})

  response = client.chat.completions.create(model="gpt-4-vision-preview", messages=messages)
  return response.choices[0].message.content

Streamlit App Configuration

Now that we've got our functions to handle image inputs and send them to GPT-4V, let's setup our simple Streamlit app:

• st.set_page_config: Sets the page title and st.title displays the title "GPT-4 Vision for Data Analysis" at the top of the app.

st.set_page_config(page_title="GPT-4 Vision for Data Analysis", page_icon="🔍")
st.title('GPT-4 Vision for Data Analysis')

User Input Handling

Next, let's create a section for users to choose their input method, i.e. either via upload or image URLs. We then want to allow users to specify a question, or just use a default "explain this image" prompt:

• st.radio: Creates a radio button for the user to choose the image input method.
• st.text_input: Provides a text input field for users to enter their question for the image.

# User Inputs
image_input_method = st.radio("Select Image Input Method",
                              ('Upload Image', 'Enter Image URL'))
user_question = st.text_input("Enter your question for the image",
                              value="Explain this image")

Image Input Processing

Next, the following section handles user-uploaded images or URLs for analysis, encodes them if necessary, and displays the analysis results in the Streamlit app.

• Initializes an empty list image_data_list to store image data.
• If 'Upload Image' is selected:
  • st.file_uploader: Allows users to upload images in JPG, JPEG, or PNG format. Multiple files can be selected.
  • For each uploaded file, the file is encoded to base64 format and added to image_data_list.
  • st.button: When clicked, triggers the analysis of uploaded images.
  • The insights from analyze_image are displayed using st.write.

image_data_list = []

if image_input_method == 'Upload Image':
  uploaded_files = st.file_uploader("Choose images...", type=["jpg", "jpeg", "png"], accept_multiple_files=True)
  if uploaded_files:
    for uploaded_file in uploaded_files:
      image_data_list.append(encode_image(uploaded_file))
    if st.button('Analyze image(s)'):
      insights = analyze_image(image_data_list, user_question)
      st.write(insights)
elif image_input_method == 'Enter Image URL':
  image_urls = st.text_area("Enter the URLs of the images, one per line")
  if image_urls and st.button('Analyze image URL(s)'):
    url_list = image_urls.split('\n')
    insights = analyze_image(url_list, user_question, is_url=True)
    st.write(insights)

That's all we need. Let's test it out with one more image from Our World in Data: Annual global corporate investment in artificial intelligence, by type.

Nice.

Summary: GPT-4 Vision for Data Analysis

As we saw with this example, OpenAI's GPT-4 vision provides a powerful new tool for quickly retrieving insights from data visualizations. Given the fact that we can analyze multiple images at once, I can imagine this model will be very useful for businesses in the coming years.

For example, a few use cases that come to mind include:

1. Market Trend Analysis: For identifying and acting on emerging market patterns.
2. Financial Reporting Interpretation: Allowing investors to quickly understand company performance and risks.
3. Consumer Behavior Insights: Assisting in tailoring marketing strategies and product development.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

If you'd like to access the code for this tutorial, you can sign up to MLQ Academy below.