Microsoft’s Seeing AI Helps Users with Vision Disabilities

Microsoft has released Seeing AI, a powerful smartphone app that uses the device’s camera and algorithms to assist people with vision impairments. Seeing AI can recognize faces, estimate a person’s mood and age, read and scan documents, and distinguish U.S. paper currency. Other experimental features, including reading handwriting or describing every item in a room, may come further in development. Powered by neural networks, the app is also capable of performing simple functions without an internet connection, increasing its reach and utility in areas with limited network coverage. Saqib Shaikh, tech lead on Seeing AI wrote,“one of the things we wanted to do was face recognition on device, and we’ve done that so within a few milliseconds you’ll hear the result. It’s all about the speed, and we try to do as much as we can on the device.” Seeing AI is available now on iOS with plans to expand to Android devices. Source: James Vincent, The Verge.