Support loading base64 images in pipelines

docs/source/en/pipeline_tutorial.md

@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ page.
 
 Using a [`pipeline`] for vision tasks is practically identical.
 
-Specify your task and pass your image to the classifier. The image can be a link or a local path to the image. For example, what species of cat is shown below?
+Specify your task and pass your image to the classifier. The image can be a link, a local path or a base64-encoded image. For example, what species of cat is shown below?
 
 ![pipeline-cat-chonk](https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/pipeline-cat-chonk.jpeg)
 

src/transformers/image_utils.py

@@ -13,7 +13,9 @@
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
 
+import base64
 import os
+from io import BytesIO
 from typing import TYPE_CHECKING, Dict, Iterable, List, Optional, Tuple, Union
 
 import numpy as np
@@ -298,14 +300,22 @@ def load_image(image: Union[str, "PIL.Image.Image"], timeout: Optional[float] =
         elif os.path.isfile(image):
             image = PIL.Image.open(image)
         else:
-            raise ValueError(
-                f"Incorrect path or url, URLs must start with `http://` or `https://`, and {image} is not a valid path"
-            )
+            if image.startswith("data:image/"):
+                image = image.split(",")[1]
+
+            # Try to load as base64
+            try:
+                b64 = base64.b64decode(image, validate=True)
+                image = PIL.Image.open(BytesIO(b64))
+            except Exception as e:
+                raise ValueError(
+                    f"Incorrect image source. Must be a valid URL starting with `http://` or `https://`, a valid path to an image file, or a base64 encoded string. Got {image}. Failed with {e}"
+                )
     elif isinstance(image, PIL.Image.Image):
         image = image
     else:
         raise ValueError(
-            "Incorrect format used for image. Should be an url linking to an image, a local path, or a PIL image."
+            "Incorrect format used for image. Should be an url linking to an image, a base64 string, a local path, or a PIL image."
         )
     image = PIL.ImageOps.exif_transpose(image)
     image = image.convert("RGB")

tests/utils/test_image_utils.py

@@ -13,11 +13,14 @@
 # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 # limitations under the License.
 
+import os
+import tempfile
 import unittest
 
 import datasets
 import numpy as np
 import pytest
+from huggingface_hub.file_download import http_get
 from requests import ReadTimeout
 
 from tests.pipelines.test_pipelines_document_question_answering import INVOICE_URL
@@ -500,6 +503,40 @@ def test_load_img_local(self):
             (480, 640, 3),
         )
 
+    def test_load_img_base64_prefix(self):
+        try:
+            tmp_file = tempfile.mktemp()
+            with open(tmp_file, "wb") as f:
+                http_get(
+                    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/dummy-base64-images/raw/main/image_0.txt", f
+                )
+
+            with open(tmp_file, encoding="utf-8") as b64:
+                img = load_image(b64.read())
+                img_arr = np.array(img)
+
+        finally:
+            os.remove(tmp_file)
+
+        self.assertEqual(img_arr.shape, (64, 32, 3))
+
+    def test_load_img_base64(self):
+        try:
+            tmp_file = tempfile.mktemp()
+            with open(tmp_file, "wb") as f:
+                http_get(
+                    "https://huggingface.co/datasets/hf-internal-testing/dummy-base64-images/raw/main/image_1.txt", f
+                )
+
+            with open(tmp_file, encoding="utf-8") as b64:
+                img = load_image(b64.read())
+                img_arr = np.array(img)
+
+        finally:
+            os.remove(tmp_file)
+
+        self.assertEqual(img_arr.shape, (64, 32, 3))
+
     def test_load_img_rgba(self):
         dataset = datasets.load_dataset("hf-internal-testing/fixtures_image_utils", "image", split="test")