How to load image dataset using csv to get proper dataset datatype

That notebook uses the ImageFolder loading strategy, but since you’re using a CSV file you can just cast the image_id column to an Image() after you’ve loaded the dataset. i.e. you can just run

from datasets import Image
ds = ds.cast_column("image_id", Image())

(From Load image data)

And when you check the features again you’ll see that image_id will be an image!