Using AI, people who are blind are able to find familiar faces

Cambridge, United Kingdom – Theo, a 12-year-old boy who is blind, is seated at a table in a crowded kitchen on a gray and drippy mid-December day. A headband that houses cameras, a depth sensor and speakers rings his sandy-brown hair. He swivels his head left and right until the camera in the front of the headband points at the nose of a person on the far side of a counter. Theo hears a bump sound followed by the name "Martin" through the headband's speakers, which are positioned above his ears. "It took me like five seconds to get you, Martin," Theo says, his head and body fixed in the direction of Martin Grayson, a senior research software development engineer with Microsoft's research lab in Cambridge.