hi all, just stumbled across the seeing ai app in the uk app store. haven't gotten it to recognize any barcodes yet, what do other people think?the quick text works but when do a full document scan on the same page, even when told to hold steady for the page to be photographed i am informed no text is found.
Comments
The barcode scanner works.
The barcode scanner works, you have to move the phone around the product and if you hear beeping, move the phone around that area.
I think it will improve in future updates.
If you'd like to contact Microsoft about seeing AI, you can using the following email address:
seeingai@microsoft.com
I've managed to scan using the barcode reader, the following items;
1. A box of Thrush cream,
2. A box of spot cream.
It doesn't sound like much but considering that it gave me all the information on the boxes, I think it's amazing.
I tried to scan a couple more items but didn't get very far. It seems the beeping cuts out sometimes or I might move the phone in the smallest direction and it cuts out.
Initial impression
Have literally tried this app for around 15 minutes this morning. The bar code reading definitely works well. I suspect the face recognition and the location recognition will be of benefit but have not tried either of those to the extent need to make comment about them other than to say the face recognition to 25 years off of my admins age but added ten years to one of my other colleagues! I am looking at this app from the perspective of somebody with very limited vision and access was ok, not so sure how well a user with no vision would cope with it.
I am completely blind.
The app works fine for me.
I like it so far!
I’m glad this has finally come to the UK, and for those reading this in other places, I hope it becomes available in more countries soon, (the release notes for the latest version say it has also just been released in Australia).
I briefly tested it this morning, and I like that it’s been designed with blind people in mind. I’ve tried several apps of this kind, and quite a few of them will work if you have decent photography skills, which, for many blind people, is not the case. This app gives easy to understand guidance for placement of the camera, and because of that I’ve been getting good results quickly, instead of taking picture after picture just to find out what something is, which is what happens with many other apps.
Another aspect of this is that they’ve given a lot of thought to what’s likely to be actually useful. It seems as though nearly every week, there’s a new app that lets the user take a picture of an object and have it identified. It’s great that so many people are making tech for blind/disabled people, but I rarely if ever find simple object recognition useful. I generally want something more specific like having text or a bar code read to me, or hearing a description of an image from a webpage, and this app does all of that and more.
A couple of features I’d like them to add (please correct me if the app already does either of these):
contact Microsoft
I'd recommend writing to the Microsoft Ai team. I gave an email above. I'd recommend using it if you want to write to Microsoft to tell them about your ideas for the app.