Facebook says it found faster way to translate through AI

NEW YORK—Facebook says its researchers have found a new way to use artificial intelligence to translate material on its social network faster and more accurately.

This could mean Facebook users eventually seeing everything translated immediately into their preferred language, not just post but videos too. Facebook already translates posts in more than 45 languages, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there is still “a lot more to do.”

For now, Facebook has made the research and its methods publicly available so developers and others can use it to build translation and other language tools. Beyond language translation, the technology can be used for chatbots, for example, or other language-based tasks.

The method uses something called a convolutional neural network, a technology that’s already used for image processing and other types of machine learning.