Sounds great and the results on the blog post look quite promising. Will there be an option to self host the AI server, instead of relying on a paid service. I'm aware that creating the software costs a lot of time and therefore paid and / or contributed resources. And open sourcing it doesn't mean given it away for free.

Interesting. Would this also be available for those of us who self-host somehow? I spend a lot of time tagging. If AI could look at my photo collection and figure out what tags go with what kind of photos (I'm thinking mainly people/faces here) that would save me a lot of time.

Last edited by windracer (2025-05-24 20:26:37)

I don't need it!
I don't want ti!

But, if all of the code will be in a pugin - as mentioned in the blog post - and none of it in piwigo-core, it will be ok.

Please let the user decide, wether he wants to use it or even get intouch with it (if it's coded in piwigo core).

Thank you!

I understand your concerns about embedding IA in Piwigo. If you read the blog post with attention, you will understand that using an "external service" for AI is also a concern for me, because you would rely on their terms and conditions. We know most of those services are far from being as "privacy friendly" as we are. This is why proposing AI in Piwigo can only be made if we, Piwigo, manages it. Of course for you users, Piwigo.com servers are also an "external service" and it's perfectly legitimate to evaluate the trust you can put in our service. It is not because you trust us for the Piwigo software that you automatically trust us for a service we host.

Here is the situation:

* AI becomes a commoditization and many users searching for their image library system have it in their "must have features". To make things more clear, we think that "improving Piwigo as if AI didn't exist" could kill the project. We don't want that. We want to offer the expected experience to our users, new ones and old ones.

* we (Piwigo) don't want to rely on external services for this matter.

* it is now possible to host "AI engines" by ourself, but certainly not on the same kind of hosting as what is required for Piwigo itself. To make things simple: you need a GPU.

The only reasonnable solution we have found is to host an AI engine infrastructure (with several servers, as described by Linty earlier). Piwigo installations, whatever their location, can request an automated analysis to this AI infrastructure.

Another concern several of you raised is "we don't want this to be activated by default". So here is our current plan to release AI in Piwigo:

* Piwigo AI, as described in the blog post, is a plugin. As you know, plugins can be activated/deactivated in a single click.

* the plugin will be embedded by default in any fresh release, as is "LocalFiles Editor" or "Admin Tools". This is mandatory if we want it to be part of the "first impression experience". And we do.

* [installation] on the Piwigo installation form (where it asks your database credentials...) Piwigo 16 will add a new checkbox "activate artificial intelligence plugin". Checked by default. Again, for the "first impression experience".

* [update] the plugin will automatically come when updating to Piwigo 16 (because it will be present in the piwigo-16.0.0.zip) but won't be activated automatically

I'll be honest, if it's only a user controllable and disablable feature, sure, knock yourselves out, but for me, zero interest tbh, I'll not be using it.

Hmm. I’m glad this exists for those who want it.

But I’m equally glad it’s entirely optional. It’ll be years, if ever, before AI can usefully analyze the photos I use Piwigo to host.

If it could run locally on a remote host, it might be more interesting, at least for the small sliver of photos I host that could meaningfully be analyzed by AI. But not many remote web hosts offer GPU processing (certainly not without additional charges), so unless I decide to self host on a dedicated server with a GPU, that’s not really an option.

Is it possible to selectively activate AI processing on a per-album basis, so some are analyzed and others are not?

Also Confirming: Is it free?

Two thoughts:

1. "Checked by default" is poor practice for situations where users may inadvertently send personal data offsite to be processed. I would personally be livid if I installed software that sent my data offsite by default, and this seems to run counter to a lot of the privacy mantra that is espoused by Piwigo.


Furthermore, an additional "offsite data agreement" box should be required *and* a very prominent warning. These supplemental pieces should be required regardless of the "Checked by default" status, but it appears stronger opinions on the topic have already been set by the dev team.

2. This feature really breaks the self-hosted paradigm. There are those of us that do have local GPU's in onsite servers, and might be willing to use this feature if *all* data could be kept local. An option to have all AI processing done locally should be included and easily enabled.