In an effort to improve the social networking experience for visually impaired users, Facebook has introduced a new feature to its iOS app that will help them "see" photos.
Using artificial intelligence, the app automatically creates a description of each photo a user views. So with an iOS screen reader, they'll be able to hear descriptions of objects in the photos, such as "The image contains three people, smiling, outdoors."
The description attribute, called Automatic Alternative Text, is produced as alt text on the image. It is an HTML feature designed to increase accessibility by reading tools.
AI, or artificial intelligence, uses Facebook's object recognition technology to determine what's in a photo.
The company says it took 10 months to develop the feature, including the current phase, using neural networks that mimic the brain to learn how to recognize images after being trained on millions of examples.
The Automatic Alternative Text feature is available in English for iOS users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Facebook says the new feature will roll out to more platforms, languages, and countries soon.
Watch the presentation video
