Envision Announces New GPT-4 Powered Virtual Visual Assistant ‘Ask Envision’ for AI Smartglasses

Today, Envision, creator of AI Electronic Glasses for Blind, launched ‘Ask Envision,’ a new virtual visual assistant is built upon ChatGPT by OpenAI for all editions of its highly-acclaimed smartglasses. The powerful new virtual visual assistant harnesses this much-discussed technology to immediately deliver life-enhancing experiences for people who are blind or have low vision.  Making it easier for users to access information and enjoy greater independence, Ask Envision provides an incredible level of utility and context on text scanned by the Envision Glasses.

Envision glasses enable people who are blind or low-vision to read and translate any type of text (digital and handwritten) into over 60 different languages. In fact, it can recognize faces, objects, and colors and even describe scenes around them e.g. “Sandra is standing in front of you,” “There is a free chair to your right”.  In addition, it can immediately connect users to trusted contacts through its Ally function – a secure video call solution built directly into the glasses. You can see it in action here.   

 The virtual visual assistant provides an high-level of intelligence to deliver more in-depth information or answer questions about pieces of text scanned by the Envision Glasses. For example, this can be asking for payment details of an electricity bill, hearing a summary of cooking instructions, or finding out what time the next bus arrives.  

Using Ask Envision is easy. With just one tap within the Scan Text feature on the Envision Glasses, users can simply scan any text (e.g., food packaging, posters, timetables, computer display screens, QR Codes, etc.), pose their questions, and answers are spoken out by the glasses in the language of their choice.  Envision Glasses users are already using Ask Envision in all sorts of ways, from making travel arrangements to learning about the nutritional content of pizzas – A selection of user videos can be watched below:    

Ask Envision is now available to all Envision Glasses customers, together with other key features including:  

  • Ally Video Calling – enabling Envision users to make hands-free video calls to chosen family and friends directly from the smart glasses for personal support and visual interpretation. 
  • Aira Integration- allowing Envision users to call Aira agents, who provide professional human-to-human, visual interpreting 24/7, directly from their Envision Glasses.  
  • Scene Recognition – Providing the user with a visual interpretation of the scene seen through the glasses.   
  • Facial recognition – Envision users can teach their smart glasses to recognize faces.  Enabling them to tell the user who is in the room or at a location, when it recognizes the face.  
  • Instant Text, Scan Text, and Batch Scan – Read any type of short text, such as signs, labels etc, or use Scan Text to read aloud more enhanced text such as letters, documents, and more.  
  • Layout Detection – Providing a more realistic reading environment, Envision puts a document into context for the reader. Whether a column-based document such as a newspaper, a shop window poster, a road sign, or a restaurant menu, Envision will decipher the document layout and provide clear verbal guidance to the user. It recognizes headers, photo captions, and more, giving verbal layout context to the user, and enabling a more natural flow to the audio readback of the document.  
  • Enhanced Offline Language Capabilities– Envision now adds four additional Asian languages, including Hindi, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, which can be accurately captured and read offline. This addition brings the total of languages supported when offline to 26, with the number of languages supported when connected to more than 60. 
  • Bank Note/ Currency Recognition – Launched with the initial partner Cash Reader app, Envision recognizes banknotes in over 100 currencies.   
  • Document Guidance for Accurate Capture – Removes the frustrations of taking multiple images to fully capture a document’s complete text. Enhanced document guidance provides verbal instructions to guide users to position documents to the optimal scanning position allowing capture in a single motion. It means documents can be captured and read in a much timelier and stress-free manner. 
  • Optimizing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – Leveraging tens of millions of data points processed by the Envision Glasses and Apps has significantly improved image capture and interpretation accuracy.     

Retailing from $1,899, there are three editions of Envision Glasses available, offering a choice of feature sets to best match user needs and budgets.  For further information, please visit the website using this link.  

###

Source: Envision