Human language has over the years witnessed massive transformation in terms of its chosen medium of expression. As technology evolves rapidly, older platforms make way for newer applications, and the same holds true for language input as well.

When it comes to the influence of technology on language, from messengers prior to 2015 to chatbots in 2016,the landscape is still evolving. 2017 has however opened up myriad possibilities to extend this beyond chatbots. AI, NLP driven language technology that seamlessly understands and integrates with underlying conversations be it bots or chats seems to show high potential.

There are close to 117 actively used languages in the world, and all these languages have taken different modern mobile communication flavors amongst the younger generation over the years.

Language technology is changing course from a mere chat and stay-in-touch perspective, to a more decisive one. It is opening up a stream of opportunities for developers to leverage language input by unlocking intent, context, named entities, interest areas, to improve consumer experience.

You ask how exactly? Lets have a look at a recent studythat points out the growth opportunity of chatbots:

As per the study, 49.9% of customers said they prefer contacting a business through messaging than a phone.

This has got to do more with the habitual context in user perspective. Most users today are multi-tasking on their phones and prefer language input to voice for contacting a business.

When asked, 51% of people said that business need to be available 24/7, replying answers to their queries round-the-clock.

Consider this: chat is one platformwhere all human expressionfinds an outlet in the online space.Theneed to stay connected basically drives language input towards this technology. And to that end, chat apps hasalready emerged asthe new national obsession among mobile users in India.

It is exactly this trend that is invigorating many new ideaswhich are expected to play a key role in deciding the future of language use on mobile.

Considering the foreseeable future, mining of user intent and context of conversations, post, tweet, comments,etc., will pretty much shape the way users find delightful experiences when communicating. Language occupies a unique position in our online journey as it comes imbibed in every command we give on the smartphone. However, what broadens the scope of language on mobile is the possibility of taking it beyond the usual i.e. connecting users.

This once again brings us face to face with our innate need to plan, discuss, collaborate, find solutions, and seek advice, using our smartphones.It is this very habit that has got mobile users hooked on to social networks and messaging apps, a place where mosthuman language now exists.

It is therefore safe to say that the mobile isused a lot less for talking, and more for language input through the keyboard.

All mobile users are inadvertently guilty of doing self-indulgent browsing in their free time. These are the moments that carry no specific agenda among users. Technologies that intelligently understand what is expressed by users in their language therefore hold immense promise in leading mobile users from one thought to another in these precise moments.

The keyboard, with its language layer opens an interesting field for satisfying the consumer appetite for delightful experiences in their own native language hyper contextually serving with relevance and immediacy.

In the future, language will increasingly guide users to live their dreams, make their wish lists, find their passion, and do a lot more on the mobile. It is language input that is expected to play a stellar role in giving meaning to our deeper thoughts and intentions using advanced technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing. Wont it be great if we can make our phones understand the deeper meanings and contexts behind the expressed language. What if we were to feel hungry and the phone could actually sense that we would like to have a pizza, and respond accordingly. With advances in natural language processing, the capability to trigger an apt response through language input brings tons of such possibilities alive on our smartphones.

In this regard, the latest thats brewing in the technology front is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the mobile keyboard. No matter what users demand be it the need to shop, to check on updates and notifications, to share, post, text or to chat, the keyboard almost never leaves their sight.

However, currently most keyboards do not perform anything apart from predicting the next word or doing auto corrections.

By intelligently making use of language input, the keyboard has the potential to align itself with the mobile users thought process to deliver meaningful suggestion. Emergence of such a thinking keyboard holds the promise to unlock user context through language, in a never before imagined manner. Sometimes turning the keyboard into a cross-app tool, and at times making it handy when users require help. The scope is simply enormous to deliver the goods through the omnipresent keyboard.With ground-breaking experiments in this realm, contextual understanding of language will hold the key to many such amazing applications in the future.

The keyboard, with its language layer opens an interesting field for satisfying the consumer appetite for delightful experiences in their own native language hyper contextually serving with relevance and immediacy.

The author is COO, KeyPoint Technologies

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How technology can shape and modify the future of Language - The Sunday Guardian