[Sipping beverage]

[Clasp snapping]

[Bag rustling]

[Doornob turning]

[Traffic on a city street]

{Piano music begins}

I'm Saqib Shaikh.

I lost my sight when I was seven,

and shortly after that

I went to a school for the blind.

And thats where I was introduced to talking computers,

and that really opened up

a whole world of opportunities.

I joined Microsoft ten years ago

as a software engineer.

I love making things which improve people's lives,

and one of the things I've always dreamt of

since I was at university

was this idea of something that could just

tell you at any moment what's going on around you.

[Cane swiping against the sidewalk]

[Skateboarder heard in foreground]

Seeing AI Voice: "I think it's a man jumping through the air,

doing a trick on a skateboard."

[Skateboard heard rolling away]

I teamed up with like-minded engineers

to make an app which lets you know

who and what is around you.

It's based on top of the Microsoft intelligence APIs,

which makes it so much easier to make this kind of thing.

The app runs on smartphones,

but also on the Pivothead SMART glasses.

When you're talking to a bigger group,

sometimes you can talk and talk,

and there's no response,

and you think,

"Is everyone listening really well

or are they half asleep?"

And you never know.

Seeing AI Voice: "I see two faces:

40 year old man with a beard looking surprised.

20 year old woman looking happy."

The app can describe the general age

and gender of the people around me

and what their emotions are,

which is incredible.

One of the things that's most useful about the app

is the ability to read out text.

Hello, good afternoon Here is your menu.

Great. Thank you.

I can use the app on my phone

to take a picture of the menu

and it's going to guide me on how to take that correct photo.

Seeing AI Voice: "Move Camera to the bottom right

and away from the document."

And then it will recognize the text.

Read me the headings.

Seeing AI Voice: " I see appetizers, salads, paninis

pizzas, pastas."

Years ago, this was science fiction.

I never thought it would be something that you could actually do,

but artificial intelligence is improving at an ever-faster rate,

and I'm really excited to see where we can take this.

"Hey!" "Hi"

As engineers, we're always standing on the shoulders of giants,

building on top of what went before.

And in this case,

we've taken years of research

from Microsoft Research to pull this off.

Seeing AI Voice: I think it's a young girl throwing

an orange Frisbee in the park."

For me, it's about taking that far-off dream

and building it, one step at a time.

And I think this is just the beginning.