New software could give lip-reading powers to everyone

Giving everyone the ability to comprehend one another might soon be much easier. A team from the University of Oxford's Department of Computer Science has developed new lip-reading software, LipNet, which they claim is the most accurate of its kind to date by a wide margin. SEE ALSO: It's not just you: Siri is getting smarter The development of the software, which was supported in part by Alphabet's DeepMind AI program, has been detailed in a paper which reports LipNet has bested the existing top marks in lipreading tech accuracy by 13.8 percent. The previous best software and its 79.6 percent mark was already light-years ahead of the efforts of human lip-readers, who averaged 52.3 percent accuracy with the same test. Counter to practical logic, the breakthrough is actually in part thanks to a less refined approach to the task -- at least in terms of scale.