Seeing AI: “a Swiss Army knife of apps”

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Have you ever seen the sunlight? Yes, you have, and I have too, but some people in the world have not … people with visual impairment.
Blind people are missing lots of things in life that we as clear-sighted people can clearly see and enjoy.
Small things in life such as looking at photos, seeing the color of your child’s eyes, or paying the right bills. We can see it every day, but visually impaired people can’t.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. And working on a technological tool that could help millions of visually impaired people around the world, would be a game changer for many lives.

Do you know someone who is blind?….. I didn’t know anyone who is blind. But now I know. This is André Louis, he is a British young man, married and he has two kids. And he loves music. But he couldn’t see anything (‘Seeing AI App’, n.d.).
But now he has Microsoft’s app called: “Seeing AI”.
In short, Andre names it: “…an app that you can read almost anything anywhere with.”. It has multiple functions, eight in total, and they all work together to produce something that you can use whether you need it. Andre calls it: “a Swiss Army knife of apps”. He uses the ‘short text’ function the most, to read short texts on signs in London. He even put the phone on the window of a car or bus to see all the signs next to the road. He feels like he is seeing everything with this app, not hearing, but seeing. A very important aspect of life is money, and with the Seeing AI app Andre can know in which currency he is paying, so he can pay for his groceries by himself now.
This is a perfect example of AI doing good, and empowering blind people to achieve more in life.
And the most beautiful quote of Andre is that he said that “Seeing AI is like having someone who can see in your pocket”. This app changes someone’s life and empowers them to do more things in life. Seeing AI is now available in a few languages, but if it can improve over time, many more languages are to come.
Next to the inspiring part of this app, the AI department from Microsoft can use all the data, to work more on AI and use it for other software applications (‘Seeing AI App’, n.d.).

References:

Seeing AI App. (n.d.). Retrieved 11 October 2022, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai