Remember how the Terminator could just look at something, scan it with his laser eye and call up all its vital data? A new augmented reality app from PR giant Dentsu is bringing us a step closer to having this power on our iPhones. The app, called Scan it (スキャン イット) and available on the iTunes Stores Japan, uses the phone's camera to scan and recognize images the way that phones up to now have scanned bar codes and QR codes. Pointing the camera at any image that's been pre-programmed to be recognized – a photo in a magazine, the cover of a CD, or the label on food packaging — will direct the phone's browser to the associated website or content.

Dentsu has been experimenting this year with several AR applications. This summer's iButterfly is a location-based coupon generator that has users with smart phones chasing virtual CG butterflies superimposed over real environments to "catch" coupons or other information linked to the butterflies. A campaign tied to the international COP 10 Conference on Biological Diversity being held in Nagoya this month uses QR codes to bring little AR animals to life in the pages of newspapers, even using standard keitai – non-smart phones – from all three of Japan's major mobile carriers.

Scan it seems to still be a work in progress. At launch, the only images it could recognize were the faces on ¥1,000, ¥5,000 and ¥10,000 bills. In the Japan Pulse test labs, scanning the faces took us alternately to a YouTube  page of videos related to Japanese money and what appears to be a YouTube search on the phrase "5 pounds." So, for the moment, the Terminator it is not. But the potential for more is definitely there. Instead of using a blotchy square of QR static on its laminated menu, a bar could print a photo of a frosty mug of beer as a mobile link to its website, for example.