Facebook’s Latest Update Uses Artificial Intelligence
And redefines what it means to connect
The race to improve apps has never been tighter. Last week, we saw the sense of urgency between Snapchat and Instagram. Twitter casually slid in by tweaking the DMs, so now it's Facebook's turn to show off. This week, the social media platform's announced a new development called automatic alternative text. This feature "generates a description of a photo using advancements in object recognition technology" so that users with screen readers on iOS devices can hear the list of items that are in photos as they swipe through them on Facebook. All of this is possible because of the Facebook Accessibility team, and the platform's advanced object recognition technology.
Automatic alt text will be launching on iOS screen readers set to English first, with other languages and platforms to follow. As Facebook states, "When people are connected, they can achieve extraordinary things as individuals and as a community—and when everyone is connected, we all benefit." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
So many updates, so little time. Watch the full announcement in the video, below.
