Unraveling the Mystery: Transforming AI Gibberish into Coherent Text

As AI art becomes more widespread in the digital world and in virtual and visual realms, an increasing number of images are showing up with it, much of it pervaded by nonsense text, which means that more and more is being said but few can understand what is being said because it is garbled: images are becoming less and less properly legible. To test this conventional wisdom, I went in search of four of the best AI-text-correction tools for easing the problem and making AI-created content look and sound as good as possible. Which of these tools is the best PRO in the business? Read on to find out.

Understanding the AI Text Conundrum

One of the most glaring problems with AI-generated images is that they often come embedded with words – sometimes they can be only mildly scrambled sequences, sometimes they’re unrecognisable characters, but they’re ever-present. Dealing with text is one of the trickiest aspects of interacting with AI-generated content, as well as one of the biggest unsolved issues in how we create images with AI. For a long time, human image annotation has been a key part of image-creation – and image-retrieval technologies such as Google and Bing.

THE PRO CONTENDERS in the Arena

After investigating four different tools that claimed to be the PROs in deciphering unintelligible text, I found out which one works best and which one is indeed the PRO. Although these tools had different accessibility and techniques, I decided to give them a try to see which one was the best at solving this typical problem. So, without further ado, let's find out which one of the tools was most effective and easy to use.

Canva's Grab Text Tool: A PRO’s Choice for Clarity

With a perfect score, the best tool (which is a premium tool exclusive to Canva’s PRO) is Canva’s Grab Text tool, which stands out for being quite good at removing confusing text in images produced by AI. In general, Canva has the best overall experience of all the apps for creating designs that you can print out for yourself and around your home. They offer an intuitive tool that converts gibberish into editable text, which helps them lead the pack.

Storia Lab’s Textify Tool: Patience Pays Off

Storia Lab provides Textify, which is a little more time-consuming and experimental to use, but can pass muster, too, with its bespoke solutions and avenues to approach the text problem. Like Jux, it’s not the easiest tool to use, but its freemium model (which means you can use it for free but get more for a small monthly charge) puts it in the kitbag of any digital tinkerer or maker.

Adobe Acrobat: The PDF PRO

The best-known tool of the lot is Adobe Acrobat, no stranger to the realm of electronic documents. But while the name might be familiar, the approach is entirely new: simply converting images to PDF format, a solution that might seem like a roundabout way, but which serves the noble purpose of converting images to editable text. It works, and incredibly well at that, but the necessity of going through yet another format relegates Acrobat to a slightly disappointing but still worthy second place in this round-up.

Fotor’s Text Remover Tool: A Workaround Approach

Like Canva, Fotor has a suite of design tools; its Text Remover doesn’t rewrite gibberish into a comprehensible text, but it does take a page from the book of typographic neural grafting and leave an empty canvas for users to write upon themselves. There’s an arts-and-crafts element to this process, as precision and an eye for graphic design are required to faithfully replicate the original – making this more of a pro tool for labour-intensive tasks with a niche, slightly clunky set of talents.

The Verdict: Casting Light on the PRO Path to Text Clarity

If you compare each tool’s successes and shortcomings for such tasks, Canva’s Grab Text tool seems like the clear winner at the moment. It’s absolutely the best way to make sense of any new AI-generated image. It makes the most sense, it’s the most accessible, and it’s the quickest one around. Adobe Acrobat does a great job too, but the extra conversion step is a little annoying.

Textify from Storia Lab, and a similar approach from Fotor, are less likely, but more innovative, approaches to achieving legible text. All these tools add some diversity to what’s possible, and emphasise the need for a toolbox of approaches to synthetically generated imagery.

Exploring the PRO Dimension

Navigating through this journey of AI-created images and text is a bumpy road with some pretty big potholes. However, the software tools that I’ve looked at here – ‘pro’ is in the titles, after all – are part of a story of ongoing development of digital darkroom tools, as we continue to meld machine and human processes and serve a world with images that resonate, inform and engage.

But in this pixelated, character-driven age, when every PNG and every footnote counts, being able to look to those same pro programmes to clarify our visual arguments is what guarantees that those messages not only get there, but find the right ones in the process.