Way back in July 2017, Microsoft launched the Seeing AI app for people who use Apple's iOS devices like the iPhone. The app was designed to assist people who are blind or have low vision by having the iPhone's camera scan an object. The app could then offer an audio description of that object. It could even scan a human face and not only recognize the specific person but it could interpret that person's facial expressions so you could learn how they are feeling.
While Microsoft has been updating the Seeing AI app for iOS for several years, many people with Android smartphones have been wondering if the company would launch it for that OS. Today, Microsoft officially announced the Android version of the Seeing AI app is finally available to download from the Google Play Store.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated the Android edition would also get the latest updates that have been added to the iOS Seeing AI app. That includes:
Richer Descriptions of photos: In addition to providing a brief summary of photos on the Scene channel, you can now tap ‘more info’ and a rich description will be generated, including far greater detail about what is in the image.
Chat to your documents: After scanning a document, in addition to hearing it read aloud, you can also chat to Seeing AI to ask questions, such as about items on a menu, the price of an item on a receipt, or to summarize an article.
Currently, the Android and iOS Seeing AI app is available to use in 18 different languages:
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Norwegian Bokmal
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
Microsoft plans to expand the number of languages for the Seeing AI app to 34 sometime in 2024.
