Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out

Re:Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out by Brajeshwar on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @09:16AM (#37674222)

Almost all blind people usually wear a dark shade of glasses. So, instead of the phone doing the camera’s work, what about a tiny Google-Glass-esque snap-on to the Blind person’s glasses that feeds to the phone for processing?

A few companies are trying it. Last weekend, I tried one, and it was not yet polished, but good enough to start. It recognized me (my friend already has me on his phone contact).

I’m trying to help a friend with his non-profit initiative, bringing the cost to about a third or even a-fourth of Google Glass[1]. After reading the article and the other First Impressions with GPT-4V(ision)[2], it is apparent that this can be possible much simpler and soon enough. The rumor about Ive[3] and Sam[4] talking about AI in Hardware has already given me some good hope.

If anyone else does AI-enabled hardware assistance for blind people and has devices that will be less than $500 a piece in retail, I’d love to talk and introduce them to the right people.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673409

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman

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Re:Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out by shoshin23 on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @10:03AM (#37674813)

Hi!

I'm the Founder & CTO of Envision. We're building EXACTLY the product you're describing. Envision Glasses is a bunch of computer vision tools built on top of the Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. We've more than 2000 visually impaired people, across the world, using the Glasses in more than 30 different langauges.

You can check out more informaion here: https://www.letsenvision.com/glasses

P.S: I know the EE2 has been discontinued but we've been working closely with Google to ensure current and future demand is met. We're also experimenting a lot with other exciting off-the-shelf glasses that I can't talk about here but I'm super excited for this whole glasses + AI space!

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Re:Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out by miki123211 on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @10:29AM (#37675176)

I'm really disappointed with Envision, TBH.

It was one of the best apps out there for (instant) text recognition, and I was pretty happy to pay for it, but since it went free, it's really not the same. There's nothing else like the old Envision out there.

Also, not an issue for me personally, but dropping support for Cyrillic in the middle of a brutal war in Ukraine, in an automatic update released with no prior warning, was an asshole move if I ever saw one.

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Re:Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out by unix_fan on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @11:18AM (#37675904)

The main problem with the glasses, in my view, is the cost. It means those of us in developing countries cannot afford it, meaning its only available to a select few. This seems to be common for a lot of assistive technology solutions, even software.

I think without a major consumer product as a platform, it will never reach the number of people it wants to help. AS in example take what the iPhone did to the market of braille note takers.

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Re:Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out by shagie on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @12:49PM (#37677461)

https://youtu.be/R2mC-NUAmMk (At 45s in is the ideal)

It's still not glass integrated - but the phone version has been out for a while ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai ) - previously discussed when it was released https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14774167 (6 years ago, 133 comments)

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