DeepMind ships SL2T sign-language-to-text on Pixel 11 — 70 BLEURT zero-shot on FLEURS-ASL, trained on 100,000+ hours across 50+ sign languages

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Google DeepMind released SL2T, a sign-language-to-text model that launched August 12, 2026 inside Gboard dictation and Live Transcribe on Pixel 11. It scores a zero-shot 70 BLEURT on the FLEURS-ASL benchmark, which DeepMind says is significantly higher than any previously reported score, and was trained on over 100,000 hours of data spanning more than 50 sign languages (roughly 25% ASL). The architecture runs on-device pose tracking via MediaPipe Holistic — extracting geometric coordinates rather than shipping raw video — and was governed by an AI Sign Language Advisory Committee formed with Deaf organizations.