Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a subfield of artificial intelligence that focuses on the interaction between computers and humans through natural language. The ultimate objective of NLP is to read, decipher, understand, and make sense of the human language in a valuable way.
NLP combines computational linguistics—rule and statistical modeling of human language—with the technology of machine learning to enable systems to learn, understand, and produce human language. It’s an essential tool behind various services we use today such as voice-operated GPS devices, voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa, automated customer service, and language translation apps.
Some common tasks that NLP takes care of are:
- Machine Translation: This is the translation of text or speech from one language to another. Google Translate is a prime example of this.
- Speech Recognition: These are systems that can convert spoken language into written form. This technology is often seen in virtual assistants, transcription services, and more.
- Sentiment Analysis: Also known as “opinion mining,” this involves determining whether a given piece of text is positive, negative, or neutral. It’s often used in social media monitoring, brand monitoring, and product reviews.
- Information Extraction: This involves automatically extracting structured information from unstructured documents. For example, AI can scan news articles and extract key entities and events.
- Text Summarization: This involves creating a short, accurate, and fluent summary of a longer text document.
- Chatbot and Virtual Assistant Development: NLP is key in understanding and generating human-like responses in applications such as chatbots and virtual assistants.
- Named Entity Recognition: NLP can identify people, places, organizations, and other entities within a block of text.
In all, NLP allows machines to understand natural language and respond in a way that appears conversational to humans. It’s a rapidly evolving field with broad applications in various sectors such as healthcare, finance, education, and more.