Leader in AI technology, Nvidia, has teamed up with the American Society for Deaf Children and creative agency Hello Monday to develop a platform designed to help people learn American Sign Language (ASL) through AI applications.
The new web platform is called Signs and it teaches users ASL with the help of a 3D avatar that demonstrates signs and gives real-time feedback on the user's signing.
The data set, which has been validated by fluent ASL users and interpreters aims to grow to include 400,000 clips representing 1,000 signed words.
“Most deaf children are born to hearing parents. Giving family members accessible tools like Signs to start learning ASL early enables them to open an effective communication channel with children as young as six to eight months old,” said Cheri Dowling, executive director of the American Society for Deaf Children.
The team behind Signs aims to include hand motions used in ASL but also feedback on head movements and facial expressions.
Anders Jessen, founding partner of Hello Monday/DEPT, which built the Signs web platform and previously worked with the American Society for Deaf Children on Fingerspelling.xyz, an application that taught users the ASL alphabet, said improving ASL accessibility is an ongoing effort.
“Signs can serve the need for advanced AI tools that help transcend communication barriers between the deaf and hearing communities,” Jessen said.
Signs is part of Nvidia’s push to branch out from just creating the hardware outside of the hardware behind AI.
“It’s important for us to produce efforts like Signs because we want to enable not just one company or a set of companies, but we want to enable the ecosystem,” Nvidia’s manager for trustworthy AI products, Michael Boone said.
Over the past year, the company’s stock has skyrocketed by more than 100%.
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock is currently trading at US$140.11, a 0.63% increase from the previous close and their market cap is $3.43 trillion.
The tool is available on the Signs website and attendees at NVIDIA GTC from 17-20 March in San Jose will be able to participate in Signs live at the event.
