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Next-Gen Lip Reading

by Tim Stevens on April 27, 2007 at 11:30 AM

Next-Gen Lip Reading
British researcher Richard Harvey of the University of East Anglia in Norwich is working on new surveillance technology that will use cameras to read lips and turn conversations into readable text. The goal is to have systems in such places as airports that monitor lips for certain keywords like, say, "bomb," and then alert authorities via text message. Though automated lip-reading technologies do currently exist, they can only understand a maximum of 30 words or phrases at best, at an accuracy rate of 50 percent.

If, to civil rights advocates, the installation of government-operated video cameras in public places was already a black eye on the face of privacy, then surely this is a sucker-punch straight to the gut. Despite those concerns, however, we're excited about the potential consumer applications this technology might someday have, like being able to dictate text messages into a camera phone.

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From Textually

Tags: cell phone, CellPhone, surveillance, Texting

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