Analyze Images & Extract Text with GPT-4o Vision and Telegram

Description

Who’s it for

Teams and makers who want a plug-and-play vision bot: users send a photo in Telegram, the bot returns a concise description plus OCR text. No custom servers required—just n8n, a Telegram bot, and an AIMLAPI key.

What it does / How it works

The workflow listens for new Telegram messages, fetches the highest-resolution photo, converts it to base64, normalizes the MIME type, and calls AIMLAPI (GPT-4o Vision) via the HTTP Request node using the OpenAI-compatible messages format with an image_url data URI. The model returns a short caption and extracted text. The answer is sent back to the same Telegram chat.

Requirements

n8n instance (self-hosted or cloud)
Telegram bot token (from @BotFather)
AIMLAPI account and API key (OpenAI-compatible endpoint)

How to set up

Create a Telegram bot with @BotFather and copy the token.
In n8n, add Telegram credentials (no hardcoded tokens in nodes).
Add AIMLAPI credentials with your API key (base URL: https://api.aimlapi.com/v1).
Import the workflow JSON and connect credentials in the nodes.
Execute the trigger and send a photo to your bot to test.

How to customize the workflow

Modify the vision prompt (e.g., add brand, language, or formatting rules).
Switch models within AIMLAPI (any vision-capable model using the same messages schema).
Add an IF branch for text-only messages (reply with guidance).
Log usage to Google Sheets or a database (user id, file id, response).
Add rate limits, user allowlists, or Markdown formatting in Telegram responses.
Increase timeouts/retries in the HTTP Request node for long-running images.