One form of artificial intelligence (AI) development is the
ability to recognize an object from an image. Facebook as a company that
believes in the importance of AI in technological advancements recently
introduces a new feature that serves to help the blind to understand the images
that have been uploaded into this popular social networking.
A feature called Automatic Alternate Text can describe the
uploaded photos using image recognition technology. By doing so, users who have
a vision impairment can hear the description of any object that's contained in
the images.
Previously, the screen reader feature will only read the
name of the person who shared the photo. But thanks to Automatic Alternative
Text, users can now listen to a more complete description, such as "image
may include three people, smiling, outdoor".
Image recognition technology of Facebook is claimed to have
been trained using millions of image examples to give a description as accurate
as possible. With this feature, the blind can get a similar experience when
they are accessing Facebook.
Last week, Twitter had launched a similar feature. But in
the case of Twitter, this social media didn't use artificial intelligence and
image recognition technology. The photo uploaders would be asked to give text
description on the image so that the visually impaired users could listen to
the full description.
In the near future, the Automatic Alternate Text feature
will be released for iOS in English. But Facebook has plans to bring the same
feature in other languages and platforms.