Tech firms slug it out to create ultimate AI translator


Books written in the Quechua Indigenous language sit behind a student during a class on medicinal plants, at a public primary school in Licapa, Peru. About 10 million people speak Quechua, but trying to automatically translate emails and text messages into the most widely spoken Indigenous language family in the Americas was nearly impossible before Google introduced it into its digital translation service on May 11, 2022. — AP

PARIS: A man from South Africa speaks Sepedi to a Peruvian woman who knows only Quechua, yet they can understand each other.

The universal translator is a staple of science fiction, but Google, Meta and others are locked in a battle to get as many languages as possible working with their AI models.

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