Microsoft Image AI Increases Accuracy To Rival Humans - Olmec Skip to main content

Microsoft Image AI Increases Accuracy To Rival Humans

By October 24, 2020May 5th, 2022Technology News

Skynet just took a step closer to becoming a reality. The word, of course, refers back to the hit movie, ‘Terminator,’ in which a computer network gained sentience and decided to do away with the human race.

While Microsoft’s latest advances in AI aren’t Skynet, their new, and recently touted AI image description routine is so good that it’s scary.

Describing an image accurately is a really tough problem for a computer, because of course, humans have a vast, rich body of experience to draw from when defining and ultimately describing what we see. Codifying that so a computer can draw on it has proven to be a daunting task.

It hasn’t stopped companies from trying though, and in 2016, Google was the first company to make a big breakthrough, reporting that their AI could caption images nearly as well as humans, with a shocking 94 percent accuracy. This is big news.

In the words of Eric Boyd, the CVP of Azure AI:

“Image captioning is one of the hardest problems in AI. It represents not only understanding the objects in a scene, but how they’re interacting, and how to describe them.”

Now, Microsoft has upped the ante with their ‘Seeing AI’ app, built for visually impaired users, which creates a real time, running narrative of the world around the person using the app. According to a recent Microsoft blog post, their new routine is nearly 99 percent accurate, and the new app will make it easier than ever for visually impaired users to navigate the web.

This is big, exciting news, and it’s interesting that the company is rushing the product to market. Beating a benchmark is one thing, but it remains to be seen how effective the new app will be. One thing’s for sure though, we’re anxious to find out, and also, possibly a shade nervous too.

Jason Manteiga

Jason J. Manteiga, Vice President of Olmec Systems, has been part of the company for over the past 20 years. He believes that having a great work environment and supportive team, is the ultimate key to success. Since being in the IT realm for over 25 years, Jason, along with Olmec Systems, has been on the Inc. 5000 “List of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies” and Channel Futures MSP 501 “Top Managed Service Providers in North America,” along with other awards and nominations. Jason earned his Bachelor Degree in Information Systems from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He also holds certifications in Microsoft MCSE, VMWare VCP, and Cisco CCNA. In his spare time, Jason is a contributor for The Center for Social & Legal Research (Privacy Exchange) and a member of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce. His hobbies include cycling and kayaking. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife, two daughters and son.