Finally they can suffer like the rest of us.
Facebook recently dropped a mobile feature that magically describes pictures to blind people. Thus solving the most common complaint from blind people: That they can’t see anything. You know … because they’re blind and all.
This feature means that the visually impared will finally be able to suffer like the rest of us as a computer reads descriptions of the hundreds of drunken selfies, clichéd engagement photos and drooling baby pictures that they’ve been missing out on while being sightless.
The feature uses a type artificial intelligence software know as “automatic alternative text” to describe pictures. This type of software learns to understand what an image contains by being fed tons of pictures of something until it can recognize certain visual cues.
For example, the software is able to identify a picture of a pizza because its been programmed to understand the set of feature’s that make a picture of pizza recognizable.
The feature uses iPhone’s VoiceOver feature to describe the pictures out loud to users. So, a picture of a pizza would be eloquently read aloud by the robotic voice as, “Image may contain: Pizza, Food” What a vivid description!
Currently the feature is only available on iPhones but there are plans for Android and desktop versions in the future. But this doesn’t at all explain how the hell blind people are going to actually use the iPhone feature in the first place. Blind people are blind, so like, they totally can’t see anything. How the fuck are they using iPhones?
Could a blind person even make a phone call with an iPhone? Why does this exist?
Creators of the feature acknowledge that the Internet is not heavily used by the blind, but that didn’t stop them from making the feature that no one asked for.
To avoid unwanted confusion the new feature will only describe something if it is 80 percent sure what its looking at. This safety guard should cut down on the number of babies being described as loaves of bread. But again, how would a blind person know the difference?
In an effort to keep things civil, the system is programmed to be very hesitant to describe anything that could be misconstrued as racist or racial. Because the last thing Facebook wants is a hyper racist bot like the one Microsoft unleashed a few weeks ago.
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