by Joe Lonergan

Be My Eyes is in the news again with their Be My AI feature, this time in a connection with Microsoft. In the Be My Eyes app people may already be aware that you can connect with Microsoft in Specialized help and get through to a human Call Centre agent from the Microsoft helpdesk to help with a technical query, but this has been taking a step further with Be My Eyes offering GPT 4 support for vision impaired and blind customers.

So, what does this mean?

Microsoft is integrating a digital visual assistant tool in Be My Eyes called Be My AI into its Microsoft Disability Answer Desk inside the Specialized help area of the Be My Eyes app, allowing visually impaired Microsoft users to resolve technical issues or perform tasks like updating software without needing the assistance of a call centre agent.

To use the Be My AI tool in the Microsoft help desk do the following:

1. Open the Be My Eyes App.
2. Then tap on Get support on the tab along the bottom.
3. Now go to specialized help
4. Tap on technical.
5. Tap on Microsoft

You now have two options, chat with Be my AI or Call Microsoft. Tap on Chat with Be My AI. You will now hear the following message:

“Welcome to the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk. This is Be My AI from Microsoft. How can I help you today? We can try some basic troubleshooting steps. You can add a picture of your device to show the technical issue and also describe what you are trying to accomplish. If we can’t arrive at a solution, then you can use the Call Microsoft button to contact the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk”.

Now an option for take picture will pop up.

So, if your laptop has gone silent or something else is wrong you can take a picture of the screen and send it to Microsoft and be my AI. Then you will receive a reply letting you know that your Laptop is performing updates or if that is not the problem, Be My Ai will acknowledge that you sent a picture and then will ask you how it can help you with this and will ask you for some more specific information. It can also help with Keystrokes. For example, I asked it for a keystroke to change the font of a document and it came back with the following impressive answer:

To access the Font dialog box in Microsoft Word using a keyboard shortcut, press the “Ctrl” + “D” keys simultaneously. This will open the Font dialog box where you can change the font, size, and other text attributes. If you are using a screen reader, it should read out the options for you. Let me know if you need further assistance.

Microsoft has noted from its short time evaluating this feature that it takes only 4 minutes on average to solve most issues compared to 12 minutes when a person calls a human agent. Microsoft also noticed, that only 10 percent chose to talk to a human customer service representative after interacting with the AI tool.

This feature was released inside the Be My Eyes app on November the 15th so most people will have access to it by now. If you are having issues with your Windows machine, we advise you to give it a try, you might be surprised by the accuracy of results from The Be My AI tool.