S

Seeing AI (Microsoft)

New

Microsoft's free AI app narrating the world for the blind and low-vision community.

About Seeing AI (Microsoft)

Seeing AI is a free Microsoft app for iOS and Android that uses AI to narrate the visual world for people who are blind or have low vision, offering multiple channels for different tasks including reading short text instantly, reading documents with layout preservation, describing scenes and people, identifying products by barcode, recognizing currency, and reading handwriting. Its People channel can recognize and remember individuals' faces, announcing them by name when they appear in camera view—enabling more independent social interactions. Seeing AI was developed in partnership with the blind community and is continually updated with new AI capabilities from Microsoft's computer vision research.

Pros

  • Completely free with no subscription or usage limits
  • Multi-channel design optimizes AI for different real-world tasks
  • Facial recognition remembers and announces known individuals by name

Cons

  • iOS primary—Android version has historically lagged in feature updates
  • Scene description accuracy can be inconsistent in complex environments

Related Tools