Priya is a college sophomore who has been Deaf since birth. Most mornings she texts her roommate, emails a professor, and searches for lecture notes, all before her first class. Until now, every one of those small tasks meant typing on a touchscreen, letter by letter. Google’s new sign language AI just gave her a faster way to do all three: sign in front of her phone’s camera, and the words show up as typed text.
Google calls the system SL2T. It turns American Sign Language straight into text on Pixel 11 phones, and it’s rolling out now.
How the New Sign Language AI Works
SL2T works through two apps, Gboard and Live Transcribe. A signer opens a text box, faces the camera, and signs a sentence. The phone reads hand shape, movement, and facial expression, then converts it into written English within seconds.
The system never uploads video. An on-device model tracks the geometric position of the signer’s hands, arms, and face, and it sends only those coordinates to the cloud for translation. It discards the original video right away, so no one has to hand over footage of their own face just to send a text. Left-handed and one-handed signers get support too, which matters for anyone holding a phone in one hand while signing with the other.
Who Benefits Most
- Parents who sign with their Deaf kids can text teachers and doctors without switching to a keyboard mid-conversation.
- Deaf professionals can draft emails and search the web by signing instead of typing on a touchscreen.
- On video calls, a Deaf participant can sign an answer, and Live Transcribe captions it instantly for hearing coworkers.
- College students like Priya can text a roommate or email a professor at signing speed instead of typing speed.
Hiring a professional ASL interpreter for those same everyday moments typically costs $75 to $125 an hour, a cost nobody can justify for a quick text or a five-minute errand. SL2T handles it for free, on a phone people already own. Small moments add up. Refilling a prescription, replying to a group chat, or looking something up before a doctor’s appointment now moves as fast as a conversation, not as slow as a keyboard.
A Tool Built With the Deaf Community
Google didn’t build this alone. A Deaf Google engineer named Sam Sepah started the project, and Google then formed an advisory committee of Deaf organizations and experts to guide the design and rollout.
The team trained the model on more than 100,000 hours of sign language data and tested it with Deaf users before release. That community-first approach echoes a bigger shift happening across assistive technology. AI-powered hearing aids are already letting people skip costly audiologist visits, and now sign language AI is closing a different communication gap.
Google DeepMind first announced SL2T on its blog, and Forbes reported on how much the Deaf community shaped it from the start.
SL2T only handles ASL for now, though Google trained it on data from more than 50 sign languages and plans to expand support. It’s live today on the Pixel 11, one phone update that could make a Deaf person’s Tuesday afternoon noticeably easier.