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LATE LAST WEEK at his Q&A, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned how the company was looking at different ways of using artificial intelligence (AI). One example was the ability to describe photos to both blind and visually impaired users.
A demo of the technology was shown at the Web Summit earlier today where Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, spoke about its plan to build systems that could make “computer systems see the world like we do”.
One of the examples given was its AI describing a photo it never saw before. The user can ask questions like ‘Is there a man in the photo?, Is he smiling?’ and the system will answer them.
“So much of the world is visual. So much of social networks is social and video [and] much of your brain is dedicated to processing visual imagery”, Schroepfer said “So one of the keys to developing systems that work is teaching computers to understand the visual world”.
Using a number of features like speech and image recognition, it identifies different attributes in a photo – one of the examples shown was a baseball game where it could tell the game played and if it was daytime or not – the user can ask questions about the photo and the system gives back the most relevant answers.
The system is called Visual Q&A, and it’s much like 20 questions. In the example given, a photo of a father and baby would see the user asking where they are, what they’re doing and if they are smiling.
The AI will analyse the photo and pick out the best answers. It will show other guesses and objects it picks out as well, but prioritise the main one.
The reason it’s doing this ties back to the main purpose of Facebook: making it accessible to everyone so that more people join.
There are millions of people around the world who have impaired vision and the ability to describe photos (and potentially videos) without needing a second person opens up opportunities for both users and Facebook.
“With all of this data that you can possibly consume for your news feed, all of the hundreds of millions of photos uploaded every day, we want to do the best job we can. Make sure we show you exactly what you want on your feed”, he said.
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Great to see you all think this is funny and even a waste of time and money. My partner however is actually blind is very excited about this concept when I read the article out to him. He as a blind person thinks this would be a great feature on facebook. You know the saying, walk a few steps in someone else’s shoes? Well, here is a good example for it. Don’t dismiss something as unneeded or stupid if something isn’t aimed at your personal needs.
While it looks like a good example of AI, you have to remember why Facebook exists. The technology is already there to describe the content of a picture. This service is for validation and improvements to the classifying objects in the picture. They want to be able to search for more than just faces to include in their social graph to identify relationships between not only people, but also between objects and activities in the photos you upload. If it manifests in visually impaired people having access to otherwise unobtainable information, then good. If it exposes a demographic to Facebook that doesn’t need it in their life, then it would be better off not there at all.
I’m skeptical of the idea mainly for the reason of: Apple users know quite well how inaccurate Siri can be, and that’s just voice operated…
“Hey Siri, is that a woman in the picture”
“Okay, I found this in the web for, “that man nitpicking”, take a look:”
For all the greatness and money that the web summit is making.. Could they not have spent some of it on a new stage this year? They’re using the same water filled crates that the pikeys use going around washing driveways..
“Is there an ugly baby in the photo?” – Oh, what a cutie! :) X x x. “Is there an unappealing looking dinner in the picture?” – mmmmm looks delicious!! :’ ) xxxxxxxx”
how about something to help stupid people be less stupid? ….I know of a guy at a tech conference in dublin at present who would have some immediate suggestions
have your say