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Date: | Thu, 21 Apr 2016 08:19:46 -0500 |
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Microsoft demonstrates app that helps see for the blind
Microsoft developer Saqib Shaikh lost his sight when he was
only 7 years old. Flash forward to now, and Shaikh is building
Seeing AI, a cognitive app that aims to help those who are
visually impaired or blind have a better understanding of the
world around them.
The app was demonstrated in a video shown at the Microsoft
Build 2016 Developer Conference in San Francisco Wednesday. In
it, Shaikh demonstrates how the app could help serve as something
of a digital seeing eye dog. For instance, in a restaurant, he
can take a photo of the menu on his phone - a voice in the app
guides him until he's got the image centered - and the artificial
intelligence will read for him the contents of the menu.
The app is designed to run on smartphones and also works with
special smart glasses that have a tiny camera built in. The
camera can "see" people or things in their path, the app
recognizes who or what they are, and a digital voice relays the
information to the user in realtime.
In the video demo, the system helped Shaikh know what was going
on around him as he walked down the street, and even described
who was sitting around the table at business meeting.
The project is part of Microsoft's larger push to advance
artificial intelligence and incorporate it into more aspects of
life in the near future. The software used to develop Seeing AI
is part of the larger Cortana Intelligence Suite, which makes
"big data, machine learning, perception, analytics, and
intelligent bots" available to developers, according to a
Microsoft press release.
C 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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