Image Captioner API Documentation
Playground
Try it on WaveSpeedAI!High-accuracy Image Captioner for generating detailed, human-like descriptions from images. Ideal for content understanding, accessibility, dataset labeling, SEO, and multimodal AI workflows. Ready-to-use REST inference API, best performance, no coldstarts, affordable pricing.
Features
Overview
The WaveSpeedAI Image Captioner converts images into rich, human-like textual descriptions. Designed for applications requiring vision understanding, accessibility, content moderation, dataset labeling, and SEO enhancement.
Compatible with all image formats and deployable in high-throughput production pipelines.
Key Features
- Generates accurate and natural image descriptions
- Supports detailed object recognition and scene understanding
- Ideal for labeling, accessibility (alt-text), and visual search
- Works in automated workflows and REST API pipelines
Why Use It?
The Image Captioner improves any workflow requiring:
- Content understanding from images
- Automatic alt-text generation for accessibility
- Dataset or training data labeling
- Multimodal pre-processing for LLMs or agents
Authentication
For authentication details, please refer to the Authentication Guide.
API Endpoints
Submit Task & Query Result
set -euo pipefail
export WAVESPEED_API_KEY="your-api-key"
REQUEST_BODY=$(cat <<'JSON'
{
"detail_level": "medium"
}
JSON
)
# 1. Submit the prediction once. Never retry this request automatically:
# a retry after an unclear failure can create a second, billed task.
CHECK='The task may already exist. Check History or the predictions list before submitting again.'
if ! SUBMIT_RESPONSE=$(curl --silent --show-error --fail-with-body \
--connect-timeout 10 --max-time 60 \
-X POST "https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/wavespeed-ai/image-captioner" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ${WAVESPEED_API_KEY}" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d "${REQUEST_BODY}"); then
printf 'Submit failed. %s\n' "${CHECK}" >&2
exit 1
fi
TASK=$(printf '%s' "${SUBMIT_RESPONSE}" | jq 'if type == "object" and has("data") then .data else . end')
PREDICTION_ID=$(printf '%s' "${TASK}" | jq -r '.id // empty')
if [ -z "${PREDICTION_ID}" ]; then
printf 'Submission response did not contain a prediction id. %s\n' "${CHECK}" >&2
exit 1
fi
RESULT_URL="https://api.wavespeed.ai/api/v3/predictions/${PREDICTION_ID}/result"
# 2. Poll until the prediction reaches a final status.
BODY_FILE=$(mktemp)
trap 'rm -f "${BODY_FILE}"' EXIT
while true; do
# Transient errors (429, 5xx) are retried, honoring Retry-After.
HTTP_CODE=$(curl --silent --show-error --fail-with-body \
--connect-timeout 10 --max-time 60 --retry 5 --retry-delay 2 \
--output "${BODY_FILE}" --write-out '%{http_code}' \
"${RESULT_URL}" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ${WAVESPEED_API_KEY}" || true)
case "${HTTP_CODE}" in
2??) ;;
000|429|5??) # dropped connection or temporary error: keep polling
printf 'Task %s: HTTP %s, polling again in 10s\n' "${PREDICTION_ID}" "${HTTP_CODE}" >&2
sleep 10; continue ;;
*) printf 'Task %s: HTTP %s\n' "${PREDICTION_ID}" "${HTTP_CODE}" >&2
cat "${BODY_FILE}" >&2; exit 1 ;;
esac
RESULT=$(jq 'if type == "object" and has("data") then .data else . end' "${BODY_FILE}")
STATUS=$(printf '%s' "${RESULT}" | jq -r '.status // empty')
case "${STATUS}" in
completed) printf '%s\n' "${RESULT}" | jq '.outputs'; break ;;
failed|cancelled|timeout|deleted)
printf 'Task %s ended with status %s\n' "${PREDICTION_ID}" "${STATUS}" >&2
printf '%s\n' "${RESULT}" | jq . >&2; exit 1 ;;
*) sleep 2 ;;
esac
doneRetry temporary errors only while polling, never the submit request. Errors, retries and timeouts
Parameters
Task Submission Parameters
Request Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Default | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| image | string | No | - | Image to caption | |
| detail_level | string | No | medium | low, medium, high | Level of detail for the caption. |
| focus | string | No | - | - | Specific area or subject to focus on in the caption (optional). |
Every model also accepts the global request options enable_sync_mode and enable_base64_output; see their pages for details.
Response Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| code | integer | HTTP status code (e.g., 200 for success) |
| message | string | Status message (e.g., “success”) |
| data.id | string | Unique identifier for the prediction, Task Id |
| data.model | string | Model ID used for the prediction |
| data.outputs | array | Output values, usually URL strings; some models return text strings or structured result objects (empty when status is not completed) |
| data.urls | object | Object containing related API endpoints |
| data.status | string | Task status. completed is successful; failed, cancelled, timeout, and deleted are failure terminal statuses. |
| data.created_at | string | ISO timestamp of when the request was created (e.g., “2023-04-01T12:34:56.789Z”) |
| data.error | string | Error message (empty if no error occurred) |
| data.timings | object | Object containing timing details |
| data.timings.inference | integer | Inference time in milliseconds |
Result Request Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| id | string | Yes | - | Task ID |
Result Response Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| code | integer | HTTP status code (e.g., 200 for success) |
| message | string | Status message (e.g., “success”) |
| data | object | The prediction data object containing all details |
| data.id | string | Unique identifier for the prediction |
| data.model | string | Model ID used for the prediction |
| data.outputs | array<string | object> | Array of generated outputs (empty when status is not completed). Items are usually URL strings, but may be text strings or structured result objects, depending on the model. |
| data.urls | object | Object containing related API endpoints |
| data.status | string | Status: completed is successful; failed, cancelled, timeout, and deleted are failure terminal statuses |
| data.created_at | string | ISO timestamp of when the request was created |
| data.error | string | Error message (empty if no error occurred) |
| data.timings | object | Object containing timing details |
| data.timings.inference | integer | Inference time in milliseconds |