Oxford researchers develop computer program that can read lips with superhuman accuracy

The researchers, working with Google's artificial intelligence division DeepMind, trained the software on more than 30,000 videos of test subjects speaking sentences. Over time, it would match certain words with particular lip movements to learn what words were being spoken. The researchers then played it further videos of people speaking sentences and the LipNet software succeeded with 93.4 per cent accuracy. This compares to 52.3 per cent for hearing impaired students, and surpassed other lip-reading programs. Unlike previous software, LipNet digested the phrases as full sentences, and allowing it to put words in context rather than decipher them individually allowed much greater accuracy.