What you need to know
- Meta AI announced a "major breakthrough" in their translation system.
- The system is looking to provide accurate translations for 200 languages.
- This is a step Meta is willing to take for a more inclusive world.
Facebook's parent company Meta announced that its AI translation tool is breaking ground as it looks to provide translations for 200 languages within its singular model.
This is all a part of Meta's "No Language Left Behind" translation system, according to a press release. The idea is to bring translations and more connectivity among people across the world. Meta describes its work with this AI tool as one that "is not just about giving people access to content on the web in their own language, it's about making the transfer of knowledge and online contributions possible too."
Meta makes sure to drive this point further in its video about this new technology saying that many people in the world do not have access to online information in their native tongue. People all over the world try to find tools for education, cooking food, and other forms of media to better their lives. Being unable to find something for your education in your native language isn't something that's unknown territory to most countries.
One of the issues Meta has run into with this new translation technology is the languages themselves. Many languages are what Meta has called "low resource."
This means that there aren't a lot of resources to be able unlike with the English language. Meta says it's been finding sentences written in other languages so the AI technology can better understand what needs to be translated in the correct way. The company has also actively searched for people who speak those languages to better improve the new technology.
Meta is also looking into AR tools by helping someone using an AR device by Meta to understand the text on the page without knowing the language. The company says it's looking to its Metaverse as the place where people will be able to do this.
There are other ways that Meta has worked to push its AI supercomputer into the next phase with this translation tool. It says that because people are at the heart of this project it wants to create a more inclusive world through its "No Language Left Behind" translation system.
