Researchers in Abu Dhabi patent AI tool to mimic handwriting

Researchers at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi have been granted a patent to develop a tool that is able to learn and mimic individual handwriting styles.

The patent suggests the AI-powered technology could be used as an aid for people with disabilities that prevent them from writing.

While the initial study focused on generating handwriting in English, the university is exploring ways to apply the technology to other languages, including Arabic.

The university said this would prove more challenging to analyse because of “the way Arabic letters are connected in handwritten script”.

“Automatic handwritten text generation can be beneficial for people having disabilities or injuries that prevent them from writing,” the patent stated.

It goes on to describe other possible uses for the handwriting-replication technology.

“There may be a case where a person wishes to write a note in a foreign language in a manner that appears that the foreign language writing is authentic and in their own writing style,” it said.

The technology could also be used to assist in improving machine learning models by being able to recognise large amounts of handwritten data, the university said.

Salman Khan, associate professor of computer vision at the university, reflected on the effectiveness of the technology tested so far.

He revealed that generated handwriting results were “quite good”.

Mr Khan said people who tested the system “could not distinguish the mimicked handwriting from the actual handwriting, and it was satisfying to see that kind of validation of the performance”.

The university said the research model did not require a large amount of data to be trained. Instead, it requires only a few paragraphs of original handwriting, something that is both impressive and potentially problematic if the technology were to be misused, officials said.

“Handwriting represents a person’s identity, so we are thinking carefully about this before deploying it,” said Muhammad Anwer Rao, an associate professor at the university.

The university, the first in the world to be dedicated to AI, opened in 2020.

University president Prof Eric Xing recently reflected on the institution’s impact on the world. “I am very proud we have achieved so much in just four years of operation – with a host of milestones yet to come,” Prof Xing said.

“We are actively training the next generation of AI specialists who will contribute to and even elevate levels of knowledge and excellence in this important area of human development.”

The technology could be harnessed as an aid for people with disabilities that prevent them from writing