Unbabel added another competitor to a fiercely competitive market on Wednesday, November 13, when it announced an AI-powered translation service.
The new product from Unbabel, Widn.AI, is built on top of Tower, the company’s in-house large language model (LLM). The AI model that powers programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT is called an LLM.
According to Vasco Pedro, CEO of Unbabel, the capabilities of AI will eliminate the need for humans in translation within three years.
The LLM of Unbabel allows AI translation in 32 languages, Vasco Pedro, the company’s CEO, said at the Web Summit in Lisbon- Portugal.
“When we started in Unbabel 10 years ago, AI was not at the stage that it is now, and so we were very much focused on creating hybrid solutions that would combine AI and human,” Pedro said.
“But I think for the first time, we believe that translation is now fully in the realm of AI capabilities, and that you can do a lot of things without needing humans at all in the case of translation.”
The original Unbabel product used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to translate text and human editors to review the finished product.
Widn.AI won’t need people. In extremely difficult use cases, humans still have a small advantage. The CEO of the tech company claims that:
“That advantage right now is so razor thin that except for really the … most difficult use cases, we believe AI is getting really there, and it’s hard for me to see right now how three years from now, you will need humans to be translating anything,” Pedro said.
“There’s still going to be humans responsible for making sure that things get translated and are delivered in the right places,” he added.
Widn.AI is the newest product in a market that is becoming more and more competitive, which also includes products from German startup DeepL and Google Translate.
These businesses have trained models especially to handle different languages because they view translation as a crucial area where LLMs can be used effectively.
There will be a “dramatic reduction” in revenue per translated word. However, he stated that more content will be translated, which will support the company’s expansion.
Pedro said Unbabel is talking to investors and wants to raise $20 million to $50 million to support the development and expansion of Widn.AI.
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