Meta has opened its AI-based translation tool – No Language Left Behind. This AI model can translate into 200 languages, many of which are not supported by current commercial tools. The announcement comes as the company aggressively develops its “universal voice translator”. Machine translation is one of the important areas of AI research; for Meta, progress in this area would allow it to better understand its users.
The 200-language translation model has more than 50 billion parameters and was trained using Meta’s new Research SuperCluster, which the company claims is one of the world’s fastest AI supercomputers. “Advances here will enable more than 25 billion translations every day across our apps,” the company’s announcement said.
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“Communication across languages is a superpower that AI provides, but as we progress in our AI work, it improves everything we do – from posting the most interesting content on Facebook and Instagram recommending more relevant ads to keep our services safe for everyone,” meta-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.