NLP – it’s the AI area that lets computers do people things with language – they can understand it, interpret it, and even sound like they’re speaking like one of us. Its the big field that covers everything from picking apart words and sentences to generating responses that sound like they’re coming from a real person – and it underpins all sorts of things like chatbots, voice assistants, and translation tools.
How does NLP actually do its thing?
NLP takes bits from linguistics and machine learning to figure out how to deal with language in steps: breaking down text into its constituent parts, then trying to get a sense of what the message really means and what the person behind it was trying to say (that’s where NLU comes in – and that’s a whole other area of NLP). And sometimes, NLP systems even have to come up with a response – which is where natural language generation comes in. They get trained on masses of text data so they can start to pick up on the patterns of language – even when things get a bit messy and complicated.
How Onextel helps with NLP
Onextel’s got a bunch of tools and channels that can make use of NLP to make automated communication easier – like letting businesses understand what customers are saying to them, powering up those chatbots that are always a bit awkward, and generating responses to customer messages – all of that across different platforms like SMS and WhatsApp, as well as voice.
Why does any of this matter?
NLP is basically the foundation underneath every fancy communication feature you see these days – chatbots that can have a basic conversation, systems that transcribe phone calls, translation tools that can pick up on nuances – you name it, NLP is the engine that makes it all go. And because customers are starting to expect more automation, faster and more natural communication, companies are turning to NLP to make that happen on a large scale.