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Seeing AI: An iOS App From Microsoft That Describes Blind Users’ Surroundings
While many tech companies nowadays continue to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can be put to good use in our daily lives, there are only a few who actually try to experiment with how today’s AI tech can help those with physical or sensory limitations. One of these is Microsoft, whose new app -- Seeing AI -- is designed to help blind users get a better sense of their immediate surroundings.
The Seeing AI mobile app is currently made available as a free downloadable app for iOS users. Debuting just this week, the app basically works by literally telling the user what is happening around them in real time. If the user is at a garden, the app will narrate the scenery. If pointed at somebody, the app will tell the user what that other person is doing. If pointed at an object, it can describe what the thing looks like, and may even be capable of recognizing specific products.
AI has made some significant progress in the last half decade, especially in terms of processing new information and in making that piece of information useful or at least, easily accessible for people. Of course, Microsoft is far from the only tech giant trying to find ways to make AI actually handy in real life. Other familiar names such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have initiated projects in order to develop apps or features driven by AI.
For instance, Apple has a screen scanning technology called VoiceOver, which helps the visually impaired detect what is on their smartphone screens when moving their finger across the display (the tool tells the user what apps or functions their finger is going over). For Facebook, it revealed back in February early this year that it has been taking full advantage of AI tech in order to describe what content are being featured in images posted in its users news feed.
As for Microsoft, the Seeing AI app is not its only foray into AI territory. The software giant has also launched tools that developers of video games can use in creating games that users can talk to. The company also developed Tay, a Twitter program that is designed to simulate the type of responses that a teenager might provide. Unfortunately, the program has ran afoul of the trolls of the information superhighway, and Microsoft had to terminate the project after Tay started saying some inappropriate stuff.
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