The future is NLG: Why there are more and more language AI companies

NLG, or Natural Language Generation, is an unknown term to many people, but soon it will start to be used often in the business world. Language is the most important element of human communication, and fittingly, advances in artificial intelligence aid humans in expressing themselves to others. Here we explain why the future is NLG.

What is NLG? 

Let’s start from the beginning; NLG is a subfield of artificial intelligence. It can extract and process large amounts of data and then share that information using human-sounding language. That is to say, the technology tells a story in the same way as a person would. Pretty amazing, right? 

Imagine that your boss asks you to review an Excel document with thousands upon thousands of data points, extract the most relevant information and put it into a report. You’d spend hours and hours combing through the data and trying to find the highlights. But, NLG can do it in seconds; composing sentences and entire paragraphs with the most relevant insights.

If you want to know more, you can click on this link where we answer FIVE common questions about natural language generation.

NLG is a subfield of artificial intelligence.

Why are there more and more language AI companies?

There are several reasons why there are more and more startups dedicated to artificial intelligence. Forbes magazine even predicts an impending torrent of companies dedicated to the world of natural language generation and processing.

Here are some reasons:

• Language is basic for human beings and without it we could not communicate. Through language we have the ability to exchange information, express feelings and emotions, ideas, thoughts, etc. Artificial intelligence must include such an important element of our lives in order to be considered, well, intelligent at all. Alexa and Siri have already been present in our lives for a few years. In fact, we interact with voice assistants on a regular basis now through language.
• AI can create more relevant content for distribution on the Internet. This is a problem for many companies that need to generate either articles or product descriptions, which in many cases, comprises an extra expense that they cannot afford.
• Mechanical tasks bore employees. Creating thousands of product descriptions may not be an attractive task for a copywriter.

Creating thousands of product descriptions may not be an attractive task for a copywriter.

• Large companies are betting on language generation companies, as they have already realized their potential. Recently, the American company Narrative Science was acquired by the software giant Salesforce.
• Advances in artificial intelligence have made the jump from the academic world and are now entering the world of business and commerce.
• Though NLG can be applied to various industries and sectors, it is not a rigid system. At Narrativa, we even apply it to the AEC industry.

Data that supports booming industry

• Last month, the startup Uniphore, dedicated to developing conversational automation technology, raised $400 million. The company is now valued at $2.5 billion.
• Its competitor Cresta, with an artificial intelligence platform, raised $80 million in a financing round and its value is now at $1.6 billion.

This makes them the first NLP unicorns!

Large companies are betting on language generation companies.

Amazing advances

In recent years, we have seen incredible technological advances in the world of NLP and NLG. Some related to the architecture of the models themselves (transformers have changed the way they are trained), to supervised learning such as GPT-3.

GPT-3 is a language model developed by OpenAI.

All these advances have been applied to search, writing assistants, language translation, sales intelligence, chatbot tools, internal employee deception, conversational voice assistants, contact centers, content moderation, and more.

About Narrativa

Narrativa is an internationally recognized business intelligence company that uses its artificial intelligence and machine learning platform to build and deploy natural language content solutions for enterprises. Its proprietary technology suite, consisting of data extraction, data analysis, natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG) tools, all work together seamlessly to power a lineup of smart content creation, reporting automation and process optimization products. 

Contact us to learn more about our solutions!