Machines now beat humans at lip-reading

How do I know you're lying? My computer is watching your lips moving.

Once again computers are proving more capable at something that has long been the domain of humans.

Nothing all that unusual here, really: Machine-based lip recognition systems have finally advanced to the point where they can detect with 80 percent accuracy what a person is saying, in the absence of audio. Humans score a pathetic 32 percent accuracy on average on the same job.

Even the researchers behind the study seem surprised by the lopsided results. Lip-reading is known to be a difficult skill to pick up, but it's an increasingly vital skill in the world today. As the linked story notes, 55 percent of people over 60 have some hearing loss, and lip reading is the only real way they can supplement what's left of their hearing to enhance the understanding and comprehension of what's being said to them.

In this case, the increased accuracy of computers at lip-reading is actually something to celebrate and which can be put to good use by us lowly carbon-based lifeforms. The old method of teaching people how to lip-read mainly involved schooling them with illustrated books that show how lips are shaped during various sounds. With advances in computer technology, new training methods involving video -- possibly even interactive -- can be developed to teach the hard of hearing how to better recognize lip formations and movements -- especially with notoriously tricky monosyllabic words. Early results show that video training can show serious improvement in lip-reading skills in as little as four hours.