Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: FB), the owner of social media giants Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, has recently launched a new artificial intelligence research project in order to make translation software that will work for "everyone in the world."
This particular project is intended to be part of an event that will go toward the Meta's metaverse. "The ability to communicate with anyone in any language - that's a superpower people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that within our lifetimes," revealed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a recent an online presentation.
There are a total of two specific translation projects in the works for Meta: No Language Left Behind and Universal Speech Translator. The first project, No Language Left Behind, an advanced AI model, has the capability of learning and translating a vast array of languages, whether it is Asturian, Luganda, or Urdu. The second project, the Universal Speech Translator, is a project that entails new design when it comes to translating speech, so that language can be appreciated in both a written and spoken manner.
Although it will be challenging to offer translation tools to all people globally in a manner that can be generally understood, Meta is sincerely dedicated to this goal and will do all that it can to pursue these projects. In a recent blog post, while Meta researchers did not provide a timeframe for the finishing of these projects or any other specifications, it still provided an emphasis on the significance of universal language translation.
"Eliminating language barriers would be profound, making it possible for billions of people to access information online in their native or preferred language," Meta researchers wrote. "Advances in [machine translation] won't just help those people who don't speak one of the languages that dominates the internet today; they'll also fundamentally change the way people in the world connect and share ideas."