The trick: Self-Marked

Google's sign language model beat every previously reported score on the benchmark.

Google wrote the benchmark.

Issue 814 August 20265 receipts4 min

Google DeepMind says SL2T is the most capable sign language translation model to date, scoring 70 BLEURT zero-shot on FLEURS-ASL, significantly higher than any previously reported score, and ships it as sign-to-text dictation in Gboard and Live Transcribe on Pixel 11

Before you read on. Your call?

The model is probably the real thing. The superlative was graded on a Google-built exam, and the 'on your phone' feature phones a server with every sentence you sign.

70BLEURT

100,000HOURS OF SIGNING DATA

50+SIGN LANGUAGES IN TRAINING

5INTERPRETERS BEHIND THE BENCHMARK

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The trick has a name

We call it Self-Marked: graded by the party that benefits from the grade. You'll see it again. Learn to spot it →

Say this in tomorrow's meeting“SL2T looks like a real accessibility win. Just know 'most capable to date' means 'beat the scores from our own papers on our own benchmark', and your signing is translated on Google's servers, not your phone.”

Receipts

Supports deepmind.google: SL2T is the most capable sign language translation model to date according to key benchmarks like FLEURS-ASL (sd-test).
Supports deepmind.google: SL2T achieves a remarkable zero-shot score of 70 BLEURT, which is significantly higher than any previously reported score.
Refutes deepmind.google: only these geometric coordinates are sent to the server for translation, allowing the original video to be discarded immediately
Context siliconangle.com: It then sends the coordinates of these locations to its cloud-based server, avoiding the need to upload any actual video, making it faster and more secure for users.
Context arxiv.org: we introduce FLEURS-ASL, an extension of the multiway parallel benchmarks FLORES (for text) and FLEURS (for speech) to support their first sign language (as video), American Sign Language, translated by 5 Certified Deaf Interpreters

Open the Receipts Pack → What each source proves, every figure traced, and what would change our verdict.