{"id":7178,"date":"2024-01-25T10:40:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T08:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disabilityconnect.co.za\/?p=7178"},"modified":"2024-01-25T10:40:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T08:40:25","slug":"microsofts-seeingai-app-has-launched-on-android","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/25\/microsofts-seeingai-app-has-launched-on-android\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u2019s SeeingAI app has launched on Android"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Artificial intelligence (<a href=\"http:\/\/stuff.co.za\/tag\/ai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AI<\/a>) is 2023\u2019s buzzword but unlike <a href=\"https:\/\/stuff.co.za\/tag\/metaverse\/\">last year\u2019s technological gold rush<\/a>, some actual good is coming out of this year\u2019s crop. Microsoft\u2019s SeeingAI app, an app designed to help those with vision issues up to and including full blindness, has <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.microsoft.seeingai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">just turned up on Android<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Brett Venter &#8211; Stuff<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The app allows a smartphone to be used as a guide of sorts. It\u2019s not quite as smart as one of those highly-trained canines but it will speak one of eighteen different languages. Unfortunately for South Africa, only English is on the list as far as native tongues go but maybe one of the other official languages will be included when Microsoft racks that number up to 36 languages next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SeeingAI uses artificial intelligence (what else, in 2023) to offer up verbal prompts about the world around users. These prompts are based on what is visible to the camera in a user\u2019s smartphone. The app can read out text (including handwriting), recognises everything from colours to currency, and is also able to offer verbal descriptions of scenes from photographs taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Image descriptions have been upgraded from simple explanations to more detailed ones, available at the touch of an icon. Exactly how that will benefit the properly blind isn\u2019t something we\u2019re comfortable commenting on but those folks navigate around cities without assistance. We\u2019re sure they\u2019ll figure out how to access a specific icon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SeeingAI can read documents and will answer questions about the content of scanned texts. That\u2019s handy for several reasons. It skips over having the entire thing read aloud before a decision is made, greatly speeding up interactions that rely on paperwork. The app\u2019s facial recognition features can not only identify specific people but can also identify what their expressions mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously SeeingAI was only available on <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.apple.com\/us\/app\/seeing-ai\/id999062298\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iOS<\/a>. Its launch on Android brings AI-powered vision assistance to a much larger section of the global population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Seeing AI: Making the visual world more accessible\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DybczED-GKE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is 2023\u2019s buzzword but unlike last year\u2019s technological gold rush, some actual good is coming out of this year\u2019s crop. Microsoft\u2019s SeeingAI app, an app designed to help those with vision issues up to and including full blindness, has just turned up on Android. Brett Venter &#8211; Stuff The app allows a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,35],"tags":[39,41,537],"class_list":["post-7178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus","category-in-the-news","tag-disability","tag-disability-connect","tag-seeingai-app"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}