- ‘Artificial intelligence’ to aid people with visual impairment in using Facebook
- The tool will help photos posted at the leading social networking site
- Technology recognize objects in pictures and then describe photos aloud
The Ssocial networking site Facebook has started using “artificial intelligence” to help people with visual impairments enjoy the photos being posted on the aforementioned social media platform.
In an Agence France-Presse article that was posted on GMA News, it was disclosed that a machine learning technology is trained to recognize objects in pictures and then describe photos aloud.
“As Facebook becomes an increasingly visual experience, we hope our new automatic alternative text technology will help the blind community experience Facebook the same way others enjoy it,” said accessibility specialist Matt King, who lost his vision as a US college student studying electrical engineering.
The feature was being tested on mobile devices powered by Apple iOS software and which have screen readers set to English. King said Facebook planned to expand the capability to devices with other kinds of operating systems and add more languages.
“While this technology is still nascent, tapping its current capabilities to describe photos is a huge step toward providing our visually impaired community the same benefits and enjoyment that everyone else gets from photos,” King said.
The words used in descriptions included those related to transportation, outdoors settings, sports, food, and people’s appearances.
The Facebook technology made its debut less than a week after Microsoft enticed software developers with a suite of offerings that let them tap into the power of cloud computing, big data, and machine learning, it was disclosed.
The Silicon Valley-based social network, on the other hand, said that it was moving slowly with the feature to avoid potentially offensive or embarrassing gaffes when it comes to automatically describing what is in pictures.
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