What is Computer Vision?

It's the science of giving machines the sense of sight. But seeing isn't enough. The real goal of computer vision is to teach computers to interpret and understand what they see.

Step 1: The World as Numbers

When you see a cat, you see a furry animal. When a computer sees the same image, it sees a massive grid of numbers. Each number represents the color of a single pixel. To a machine, an image is just meaningless data.

Step 2: Finding Patterns

The first job of a computer vision model is to find basic patterns in the pixel data. It learns to identify simple things like edges, corners, colors, and textures. It's not looking for "whiskers" yet, just the lines and curves that might make up a whisker.

Step 3: From Patterns to Perception

The AI then combines these simple patterns into more complex features. It learns that certain arrangements of lines form a "pointy ear," and that a collection of "furry textures" and "pointy ears" often means "cat." This is how it builds a true understanding of the objects in an image.

Real-World Applications

This single, powerful ability—to see and understand—unlocks a universe of possibilities across every industry.