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An Honest Take

From the person who built this — and what you should know

Why build this?

Because "what pill is this?" is one of the most common health questions people Google. Parents find pills in their teenager's room. Elderly people dump their pill organizer and can't tell the blue one from the white one. Someone drops a bottle and pills scatter across the floor. These are real, everyday situations where a quick answer matters.


Should I trust this tool?

For a quick reference? Yes, it's quite good — pill imprint codes are essentially serial numbers, and the databases are comprehensive. But for any decision about taking medication? No. Never trust AI alone. Your pharmacist will identify any pill for free, and they can also check for interactions with your other medications. PillOrNOT is a flashlight, not a doctor.


What about counterfeit pills?

This is the biggest limitation. Counterfeit pills (especially fake oxycodone, Xanax, and Adderall laced with fentanyl) are designed to look exactly like real pills — same imprint, same color, same shape. PillOrNOT cannot detect counterfeits from a photo. If you have any doubt about a pill's authenticity, do not take it. Fentanyl test strips and professional lab testing are the only reliable methods.


What about supplements and vitamins?

Supplements aren't regulated by the FDA the same way as prescription drugs. Many don't have standardized imprint codes. PillOrNOT will try to identify them, but accuracy is lower for supplements. If it's a vitamin or supplement, the bottle is usually your best source of truth.


What about privacy?

We know pill photos are sensitive. That's why we built this with zero servers — your photos go directly from your phone to Groq's AI and back. We literally cannot see what pills you're identifying. No logs, no database, no user accounts. Just static code on Cloudflare's CDN.

The best outcome would be if this tool helps someone identify a pill and then take it to their pharmacist for confirmation. The worst outcome would be someone taking an unverified pill because an AI said it was safe. Please be the first person, not the second.

When in doubt: pharmacist, not phone.

— The Creator of PillOrNOT