Google's AI Brings Sign Language to Smartphones

Google has launched a sign-language-to-text (SL2T) model, bringing sign language AI into consumer products for the first time. The technology powers sign-to-text dictation in Gboard and Live Transcribe on Pixel 11, starting with American Sign Language to English, with more devices and languages to follow. Trained on over 100,000 hours of data across 50-plus sign languages, SL2T uses pose landmark tracking rather than raw video to protect user privacy. The model translates directly into text without intermediate steps, achieving a record benchmark score of 70 BLEURT on FLEURS-ASL, serving an estimated 70 million Deaf and hard of hearing users worldwide.