Unpredictable background noise, the large variety of accents and dialects, and the wide range of tones that influence human speech, make ASR even harder. In the type of conversational speech that is present in live streams, people donвЂ™t always naturally speak clearly or wait their turn to speak. Laying Out the ChallengeДЄlthough automated caption technology, which predicts a sequence of words from a raw audio signal, has been around since the late 2000s, it is still an exceptionally difficult task. The speed and scale of this AI-powered technology was only possible thanks to advances Facebook AI has made in automated speech recognition (ASR) over the past few years. And, as workplace policies evolve, automatic captioning has become essential for employers to keep their staff and customers informed through safety updates. Facebook Live automatic captions are helping governments disseminate crucial public health information, and ensuring that millions of viewers across the world вЂ“ whether they have hearing loss, or are just watching where audio is not available вЂ“ get the message. Already, six languages are supported: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and French. While Facebook provides automatic closed captioning for on-demand videos in 16 languages, and just announced similar capabilities for Instagram IGTV, access to live, real-time news and information is still a need to be met.ДЇacebook AI researchers and engineers jumped into action and have now made live video content more accessible by enabling automatic closed captions for Facebook Live and Workplace Live. вЂњVideo captioning is critical for people like me in the deaf community during a public health emergency,вЂќ explains Brenden Gilbert, a production operations engineer at Facebook. According to the World Health Organization, over 5% of the worldвЂ™s population вЂ“ or 466 million people вЂ“ have disabling hearing loss, and that is projected to increase to over 900 million by 2050. It needs to be available to the hundreds of millions of people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing.

While there is no shortage of information, not everyone can access it. Audiences for newscasts and government briefings have also ballooned as the public seeks updates on the outbreak, travel guidance and personal hygiene advice to protect themselves from getting sick. Messaging, voice and video calling have surged in recent months during the COVID-19 pandemic as people around the world check in with family, friends and colleagues.

Facebook live closed captioning