Microsoft’s heart was in the right place when it created an app called Seeing AI. The concept is that the app uses artificial intelligence (AI — get it?) to “see” the room around you for sight-impaired users. Calling itself a “talking camera,” Seeing AI scans a room for people, documents, text and more. The app can also identify the big picture and share what it sees and describes the scenes.

What It Does Best/Worst

The coolest thing it does is to identify people, including characteristics such as gender, age and facial expression. *I* think it does a fantastic job since it identified me perfectly as a 22-year-old happy woman, and did a fairly good job IDing my nephews, give or take a few years. It also overestimated my sister’s age but got her facial expression.

My father, who just turned 72, begs to differ. The app looked at him and my 11-year-old nephew and kind of goofed:

The app got some scenes right….

And some scenes wrong…

Please Watch the Video

Check out this quick overview to see it in action.