What are the best AI object detection demos online?

The best AI object detection demos available online typically showcase real-time performance, customization options, and integration with popular frameworks. Three standout examples include Google’s TensorFlow Object Detection API demo, YOLOv8’s web interface, and Hugging Face’s community-driven implementations. These demos balance accessibility with technical depth, allowing developers to test pre-trained models, experiment with custom data, and understand model behavior through visual feedback.

First, Google’s TensorFlow Object Detection API provides a Colab notebook demo (https://colab.research.google.com/github/tensorflow/hub/blob/master/examples/colab/object_detection.ipynb) that lets users run inference using models like SSD MobileNet or Faster R-CNN. The demo supports image uploads and webcam input, displaying bounding boxes and confidence scores. Developers can tweak confidence thresholds or switch models to compare speed-accuracy tradeoffs. This is particularly useful for testing how different architectures perform on specific hardware, such as CPUs versus GPUs. Second, Ultralytics’ YOLOv8 Web Demo (https://demo.ultralytics.com/) offers a no-code interface for real-time detection. Users can drag-and-drop images or videos to see YOLOv8’s speed and precision, and the demo includes code snippets for integrating the model into projects. Finally, Hugging Face Spaces (https://huggingface.co/spaces) hosts community-built demos like Detectron2-based implementations, which allow fine-grained control over object classes and visualization settings. These demos often include explanations of model architecture, making them educational for developers new to object detection.

For developers interested in specialized use cases, Roboflow’s Object Detection Demo (https://roboflow.com/demo) focuses on custom model deployment. Users can upload their own datasets, train lightweight models via the platform, and immediately test them in a browser. Another example is DeepLabCut’s pose estimation demo (https://deeplabcut.github.io/), which adapts object detection for tracking animal movements in research. These tools highlight how object detection can be tailored beyond generic COCO dataset classes. Additionally, OpenCV’s DNN module tutorials (https://learnopencv.com/deep-learning-based-object-detection-using-yolov3-with-opencv-python-c/) demonstrate integrating models like YOLO or EfficientDet with OpenCV, useful for embedding detection into existing pipelines. Such demos often provide performance benchmarks and export options for mobile or edge devices.

For edge deployment, TensorFlow Lite’s object detection demo (https://www.tensorflow.org/lite/examples/object_detection/overview) showcases optimized models for mobile and IoT devices. The demo includes Android and iOS example apps with source code, illustrating how to reduce latency and memory usage. Similarly, NVIDIA’s Jetson Inference Demo (https://github.com/dusty-nv/jetson-inference) provides Python and C++ APIs for running real-time detection on Jetson hardware, emphasizing low-resource environments. These demos are valuable for developers building applications like drones or surveillance systems, where efficiency is critical. By combining practical code examples with adjustable parameters, they bridge the gap between prototyping and production-ready solutions.