Skip to main content

Microsoft’s Seeing A.I. app now lets users explore photos by touch

The Microsoft Seeing A.I. app was first announced in 2017 and was an instant hit for many vision-impaired users. The app essentially uses artificial intelligence to describe what’s in a photo, allowing blind and low vision users to get an idea of what an image looks like. Now, the app is getting even better, thanks to an update to the iOS version released by Microsoft.

Perhaps the most interesting new feature allows users to “explore photos by touch,” according to Microsoft. Specifically, users can now touch on a photo with their fingers to hear a description of a particular object within an image — making image descriptions a whole lot more detailed. With the feature, users can explore photos stored on the phone, photos on social media, and more.

Recommended Videos

A similar feature was already available in the app through the live camera view, allowing users to get descriptions of objects actually in front of them instead of just in an image.

There are other new features coming to the app, too. For example, the app now offers native iPad support, which could help produce an even better Seeing A.I. experience thanks to the larger display. Last but not least, the app offers improvements to the channels feature — for example, users can customize the order that channels are shown, which makes it easier to quickly access certain features.

This is the first time, the Seeing A.I. app has received a major update in a while. After launching in 2017, it received a major update a few months later, which added color recognition, identification of bank notes in four different currencies, light detection, and handwriting recognition. While the new update perhaps isn’t as major as that one was, it should still make Seeing A.I. a whole lot more useful for users.

Seeing A.I. is currently only available on iOS, though hopefully, it will eventually make it to Android. After all, the Android operating system is the most popular mobile operating system in the world, and Seeing A.I. would bring Microsoft’s arguably revolutionary tech to a whole lot more people who could make use of it.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
I hate the new Photos app in iOS 18
Photos app on iOS 18.

When Apple launched the iPhone 16 line, it also released iOS 18 to the masses after months of betas. Though the biggest feature of iOS 18 is Apple Intelligence, which didn’t actually launch until the iOS 18.1 release, there are plenty of other things that iOS 18 brings to the table. That includes RCS messaging, more home screen customization, a revamped Control Center, and more.

One app that got a significant redesign in iOS 18 is the Photos app. After around a decade of mostly the same design and what I would call muscle memory, the new Photos app is, well, quite jarring — and I'm not a fan.
The new Photos app is messy
The old Photos app Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends

Read more
A PC emulator is now on the iPhone app store after previous rejection
A photo of an Apple screen and a close-up of the App Store icon with three notifications on it.

A new game emulator for iOS has joined the party. UTM, an open-source PC operating system emulator, has released UTM SE after a lengthy review process and a previous rejection.

You can download UTM SE for free on App Store for iOS and visionOS, and it'll be added to AltStore Pal, an alternative app marketplace in the EU. "Shoutouts to AltStore team for their help and to Apple for reconsidering their policy," UTM posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Read more
The one thing I really want to see at WWDC 2024
Someone holding a natural titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Well, folks, it's almost time. WWDC 2024 — Apple's annual developer conference — kicks off in a matter of hours. The Worldwide Developers Conference is always a big deal for Apple, but this year's gathering is especially important.

In addition to the usual array of software updates, WWDC 2024 is where Apple is expected to have its big AI moment. After headlines being dominated by ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Samsung Galaxy AI, WWDC 2024 is where we'll almost certainly see Apple's vision for an AI future.

Read more