Facebook has launched its new AI(Artificial Intelligence) technology to help the partially
blind and visually impaired persons that will let them know what the image, uploaded is all
about and who and the persons are in it. This new AI technology will read image and tell
what it is in the form of audio output. According to latest survey about 1.8 billion images are
uploaded in social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Blind people generally use navigation software called screen readers to make computer
sense text and and convert them into audio, but this is applicable for only title text and not
for analysing the information about the images. According to Facebook it has trained its
software to understand and recognise 80 familiar objects and activities, like the images of
food Pizza, Burgers etc. and many more as such.
The key person behind this whole project is Matt King who is a Facebook Engineer. Actually
Matt lost his sight because of Retinitis Pigmentosa, a condition where light sensitive cells of
retina gets affected. Matt wanted to develop object recognition software which can sense
image and convert its detail in the form of audio to visually impaired persons, and its done
now. This feature is presently launched for Facebook iOS App, condition that your default
language is set to English and you are living in US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. It will
be live everywhere soon !