The application’s service is configured for a variety of ChatBot APIs, including OpenAI and Mixtral, depending on availability and pricing. A custom “prompt” has been developed which extracts the key information from the text read from the camera which works with these engines. Additional engines may be added in the future as availability dictates.

Every known precaution has been taken to keep the information confidential. The BriefLook App and Service do not store or log the contents of the document or the reply from the ChatBot. We pay the API fees to OpenAI and Mixtral so they do not use the submitted data for training data. Submissions to the ChatBot are all made from BriefLook’s servers, not your individual phone, in order to prevent any statistics gathering based on IP or cookies. No document data is sent to advertisers. All connections are encrypted. It is possible that data is retained for a short period of time for regulatory or functional purposes by OpenAI, but it is against the terms of service to use it for training.

The user has the option to subscribe to an inexpensive monthly subscription which eliminates all advertising and gives the subscriber’s requests a “fast lane” through the back-end server. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time from Apple’s App Store app or iCloud profile, after which the user will not be billed again, and the subscription will lapse at the end of its term. If the user opts not to subscribe (by closing the subscription window in the intro), the application will show advertisements to the user based on their IP address and the phone’s advertising ID in order to allow us to pay our AI and service proviers.

You can easily cancel at any time (without even speaking or contacting us) through Apple’s App Store app. Open the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, click on your profile icon in the upper-right hand corner, and press the “Subscriptions” button to see all your current subscriptions. From the list, select “BriefLook,” and on the page that appears, tap “Cancel Subscription.” The subscription will no longer renew or charge your account in any way, and will remain active through the end of its current term. After this time, you can still use the app, but it will activate the advertising system and request ads to display for you within the app.

BriefLook does not translate the text. Rather, it summarizes the text in a different language. Combined with an interface designed for document scanning, this gives you the ability to very quickly get the gist of the letter– who it’s from, what it’s about, and what needs to be done in response– without translating and reading the whole text. If the letter is important enough, it is possible you’ll want to use Google Translate afterwards, but if you just need the key details that’s not necessary.

It will actually extract any text it sees in the camera, as long as it is contained within a “rectangle” of lightly-colored space. This can include mail, cards, signs, or warnings. It will tend to give you a quick summary of almost any text you snap a photo of. However, the system is specifically designed to maximize the usefulness when processing mail, including looking for information on the sender, and looking for information on what the recipient is being requested to do. This information may not exist on a posted sign, which may confuse it in some situations. That being said, users have found it useful for its quick summary without having to drill down to find buttons or select text with your finger in Google or Apple Translate apps, so give it a try!

BriefLook can read mail in almost any language that uses the Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Thai alphabets. Unfortunately, it can’t yet read mail in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, or other alphabets. However, BriefLook is capable of creating summaries in languages that use these alphabets and almost any other. I have not yet found a language in which it can’t generate a summary, but if you have any issues in any of these languages, please reach out to the developers so we can analyze it. It has been successfully used to generate Pashto from German, Hindu from Polish, and many other combinations, so give it a try!

By default, BriefLook generates summaries in the top-selected language of your phone’s “Language & Region” OS setting, even if that language is not supported by the app or iPhone. For example, if you have set Pashto as your iPhone’s language, even though the iPhone itself is not localized for that language, BriefLook will generate summaries in that language and alphabet. However, if you want to change the summaries without changing the Phone’s settings, tap the “i” button in the upper-left hand corner within BriefLook, and at the bottom of the screen you will see “Summarizes in: System Default” text. Tap on the language, and it will give you a screen allowing you to search for and select any language you would like. To return BriefLook to using whatever language is set in the phone’s Settings, select “System Default – Language”.