As IT giants compete to control the next major battlefield on the internet, Google stated on Wednesday that it aimed to build artificial intelligence utilizing the top one thousand languages spoken worldwide.
Data is essential to the development of AI, and Google and it’s Big Tech competitors are looking to collect data to improve the functionality of their products and make them more accessible to as many people as possible.
Johan Schalkwyk, a researcher at Google, remarked, “Imagine a new internet user in Africa speaking Wolof using their phone to inquire where is the nearest drugstore.” According to Schalkwyk, these scenarios “we take for granted,” yet languages are “not available to everyone in the globe.”
Globally, there are more than 7,000 languages, claims Schalkwyk. Google, however, only provides translations for about 130 of them.
The world’s largest search engine intends to further expand this and mine data in new languages not only from online texts but also from videos, photos, and audio.
Additionally, the group is attempting to gather audio files for languages for which there may not be a wealth of written resources. Google intends to incorporate new developments made on the project, which is expected to take several years, into key products like YouTube and Google Translate.
No Language Left Behind is a similar initiative by Facebook parent company Meta that aims to develop translation tools for hundreds of foreign languages.
