More than 70 million deaf or hard-of-hearing people globally use sign language, but there’s an acute shortage of interpreters. Silence Speaks is a British startup that wants to bridge that gap with an AI-powered sign language avatar capable of translating text to sign language.
Communication problems can be devastating and isolating for the deaf, especially in environments with background noise and crosstalk. It’s often impossible for deaf and hard-of-hearing folks to follow conversations in train stations, hospitals, school classrooms, and busy offices. Even people with cochlear implants pick up only a few words from each sentence and can struggle with tone.
Developed by and for the deaf community, Silence Speaks can accurately translate text into British Sign Language (BSL). There are more than 150,000 BSL users in the UK. The model was trained with datasets covering regional dialects, contextual language, and emotional tone to power an AI-generated avatar that goes beyond simple direct translation to convey intent and emotion.
WIRED has a policy of not sharing a story with a company before publication, but we sent an edited version of this piece to Silence Speaks so that the company could generate an AI avatar based on me for a sample video. There were no changes to the text.
A future version that can translate speech, text, and sign language in any direction is a truly tantalizing prospect. For now, the focus is to build a strong foundation, prove that the technology works, and show it has a role to play in immediately improving accessibility for the deaf. The platform includes built-in captioning functionality for deaf users who don’t sign or are still learning sign language.
Transport Trials
Silence Speaks is getting a huge lift with Transport for London—the agency responsible for more than 250 stations and all the Metro lines in the UK’s capital. It plans to roll out the Silence Speaks AI-powered sign language avatar to make trains more accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing by offering visual displays for train announcements. People can also scan QR codes on their phones to get sign language videos with the latest information.
A greeting cards company also employs Silence Speaks technology to create birthday and other event cards. Each card contains a QR code that the recipient can scan to stream a special signed video message on their phone.
One of the cool things about the tech is that licensees can create their own characters to serve as signing AI avatars. Characters can be photorealistic or cartoonish. For this article, I submitted a single photograph to create my avatar for the videos. While AI usually struggles with hands, my digits look perfect for accurate signing, but my face is downright weird (weirder than usual). My kids find it creepy, but it’s not a million miles away, and companies will likely spend longer refining their chosen characters. There is even scope to use popular characters like Spider-Man or Wonder Woman as sign interpreters.
Getting on Board
Silence Speaks has been gaining momentum ahead of another investment round. Chloe Smith, former secretary of state for Science, Innovation, and Technology, who led the 2022 legislation to recognize British Sign Language in UK law, has joined as chair of the company’s board.
“People who use sign language can often be excluded, and that’s wrong,” she tells WIRED. “We hope that our app will help deaf communities and hearing communities to communicate better together.”
