It was not all that long ago that text-to-speech technology made its debut. And over the years, the technology has improved by a country mile. Bill Gates and a group of inventors, however, are currently working on something that is a lot more innovative than that.
According to a new report, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, along with Intellectual Ventures co-founder Nathan Myhrvold, and 8 more people have recently filed a patent for a text-to-video technology.
Now you may be thinking converting text to video sounds a bit awkward, but the patent application explains this impressive new technology in elaborate detail:
“According to one contemplated scenario, a student is assigned a reading assignment. To make the assignment more interesting, the student may use his or her mobile phone to take a picture of a page of the textbook. The systems and methods described herein may then generate a synthesized image sequence of the action occurring in the text.
Thus, rather than simply reading names and dates, the student may see soldiers running across a battlefield. The systems and methods may further gather auxiliary information (e.g., the color of the soldiers’ uniforms, the topographical layout of the battlefield, what the generals looked like, time of year, weather conditions, etc.), which may be incorporated into the synthesized image sequences.”
In simpler terms, this means that students can easily take a photo of a page and the application will then create a video that illustrates each and every single word that is mentioned in the text. It may sound simple, but it remains to be seen how it is implemented in the real world.
Nevertheless, the technology is rather advanced in its scope. It is said to even recognize handwriting and also include translation features — this will makes it quite helpful regardless of the language being used.
Better yet, this revolutionary new technology could the green light for production very soon. While no details have been provided for a potential launch date, but word is that Bill Gates is planning to use the new technology for his educational efforts around the world.
Surely, the perfect place to start!
