What is natural language processing?
Natural language processing (NLP) is the branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that deals with communication: How can a computer be programmed to understand, process, and generate language just like a person?
While the term originally referred to a system’s ability to read, it’s since become a colloquialism for all computational linguistics. Subcategories include natural language generation (NLG) — a computer’s ability to create communication of its own — and natural language understanding (NLU) — the ability to understand slang, mispronunciations, misspellings, and other variants in language.
How natural language processing works
Natural language processing works through machine learning (ML). Machine learning systems store words and the ways they come together just like any other form of data. Phrases, sentences, and sometimes entire books are fed into ML engines where they’re processed based on grammatical rules, people’s real-life linguistic habits, or both. The computer then uses this data to find patterns and extrapolate what comes next. Take translation software, for example: In French, “I’m going to the park” is “Je vais au parc,” so machine learning predicts that “I’m going to the store” will also begin with “Je vais au.” All the computer needs after that is the word for “store.”
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Source: IT Strategy