{"id":138725,"date":"2026-08-13T13:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/138725\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T13:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T13:27:09","slug":"google-deepmind-unveils-sign-language-to-text-feature-for-pixel-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/138725\/","title":{"rendered":"Google DeepMind unveils sign-language-to-text feature for Pixel 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google\u2019s artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind has announced it will be making a new sign-language-to-text translation model (SL2T) available on its Pixel 11 phone, turning American Sign Language (ASL) into English.<\/p>\n

The technology, offered through the Gboard keyboard and Live Transcribe, allows users to sign instead of typing when searching the web, creating messages or documents, interacting with the Gemini AI software and in conversations.<\/p>\n

SL2T has been trained in over 50 sign languages and on more than 100,000 hours of data \u2013 of which around a quarter is in ASL.<\/p>\n

Instead of using a camera feed, SL2T uses \u201cpose landmark locations\u201d and geometric coordinates for its translations, immediately discarding the original video and bypassing annotations known as \u201cglosses\u201d which Google says fail to \u201ccapture rich, non-linear aspects of sign language such as non-manual markers and spatial constructions\u201d.<\/p>\n

The company also acknowledges \u201coccasional errors\u201d with the tech, around rare signs, rapid fingerspelling, passive constructions, classifier depictions and tense without context (such as \u201ckicked off\u201d instead of \u201cstart\u201d).<\/p>\n

In a news article<\/a> about SL2T, published on Wednesday, Google DeepMind\u2019s sign language team said they \u201cbelieve in building with the Deaf community, not just for it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeaf perspectives have shaped every stage of this project \u2014 from conceptualization by Sam Sepah, a Deaf Googler, to data collection with Deaf partners, evaluation in Deaf user studies, and impact assessment of the technology with Deaf experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo guide responsible real-world deployment, we established the AI Sign Language Advisory Committee (AISLAC), bringing together many global Deaf organizations and subject-matter experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough this participatory governance model, the communities most impacted by our technology directly influence our development priorities,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

The team also said more devices would offer the technology soon, with additional sign languages to follow.<\/p>\n

News of SL2T comes more than a year after Google DeepMind announced the launch of SignGemma<\/a>, which it described as its \u201cmost capable model for translating sign language into spoken text\u201d that would launch later in 2025.<\/p>\n

However, speaking to DeafEXPO attendees in Birmingham in May, Google\u2019s EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) lead for accessibility and disability inclusion, Christopher Patnoe, said the company hadn\u2019t hit its \u201cquality metrics\u201d for the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re going to continue to work on this with deaf people, or partner with organisations literally around the world, and we\u2019re going to share it when we\u2019re ready, starting with ASL, then different languages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is coming. We want to make sure it\u2019s good enough again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It is not clear if SL2T is the new name for SignGemma.<\/p>\n

Google has been approached by Liam O\u2019Dell for comment.<\/p>\n

Images: Google DeepMind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind has announced it will be making a new sign-language-to-text translation model (SL2T)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[28097,68508,68509,68510,5044,21566,132,7543,66,2740,134],"class_list":["post-138725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-accessibility","tag-american-sign-language-asl","tag-british-sign-language-bsl","tag-deafness","tag-deepmind","tag-disability","tag-google","tag-google-deepmind","tag-news","tag-sign-language","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}