San Francisco: Microsoft has released a free iPhone app that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell the blind what is around them.

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If the phone is pointed at a park, the camera app, named Seeing AI, can describe how the scene looks like.

Similarly, it can tell the amount of your restaurant bill or narrate just about anything it is pointed at. 

"With this intelligent camera app, just hold up your phone and hear information about the world around you," Microsoft said of its app designed to turn the "visual world into an audible experience".

Microsoft describes Seeing AI as "a free app that narrates the world around you. Designed for the low vision community, this research project harnesses the power of AI to describe people, text and objects".

But Microsoft is not alone in tackling this problem. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are working on similar projects, CNET reported on Wednesday.

This is also the latest project from Microsoft built using its artificial intelligence technology.