Microsoft partners with Team Gleason to build a computer vision dataset for ALS

Microsoft and Team Gleason, the nonprofit organization founded by NFL player Steve Gleason, today launched Project Insight to create an open dataset of facial imagery of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The organizations hope to foster innovation in computer vision and broaden the potential for connectivity and communication for people with accessibility challenges. Microsoft and Team Gleason assert that existing machine learning datasets don't represent the diversity of people with ALS, a condition that affects as many as 30,000 people in the U.S. Project Insight will investigate how to use data and AI with the front-facing camera already present in many assistive devices to predict where a person is looking on a screen. Team Gleason will work with Microsoft's Health Next Enable team to gather images of people with ALS looking at their computer so it can train AI models more inclusively. Participants will be given a brief medical history questionnaire and be prompted through an app to submit images of themselves using their computer.