What is NLP?
Natural Language is all about how humans communicate with each other, figuratively through text and speech. Even while reading this, you are being communicated through text. In this modern era of technology where computers are a quintessential part of our lives, it is very important for us to communicate with our computers.
Over the years, Artificial Intelligence has overdone it’s ability to make things happen in the world of technology. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a component of AI in the field of linguistics that deals with interpretation and manipulation of human speech or text using software. It enables the computer to understand the natural way of human communication by combining machine learning, deep learning and statistical models.
Due to the vast availability of Big Data, Modified Algorithms and Powerful devices, NLP is a rapidly advancing technology. There are several ways to approach NLP, starting from statistical and machine learning to rule based and algorithmic approaches.
There are several tools provided to work in NLP. Python programming language provides a Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) and other open source libraries and educational resources for NLP programming. Statistical Analysis combines Machine Learning and Deep Learning models along with Computer Algorithms to extract and differentiate the text and voice data and statistically provide meaning to all the elements.
Currently, Neural NLP is progressing since Representation Learning and Deep Neural Network-style machine learning started widespread in NLP. NLP helps in a vast range of services starting from Business Analytics, Speech recognition, Social media etc.
Top NLP Applications
- Market Intelligence
Marketers can use natural language processing to understand their customers in a better way and use those insights in creating effective strategies. The power of NLP equips them for analyzing topics, keywords, and making proper use of unstructured data. It can also be used to identify customer’s pain points and keep an eye on your competitors.
- Speech Recognition
Speech Recognition is a technology that enables the computer to convert voice input data to machine readable format. There are a lot of fields where speech recognition is used like, virtual assistants, adding speech-to-text, translating speech, sending emails etc.
It is used in search engines where the user can voice out the name of their search requirements and get the desired result, making our work easier than typing out the entire command.
- Voice Assistants and Chatbots
All of us are well versed with the idea of Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant, and chatbots that are integrated in many websites to help and guide new users.
Voice assistant is a software that uses NLP and speech recognition to understand voice commands of a user and perform accordingly. Similarly, Chatbots are programs that are designed to assist an user 24/7 and respond appropriately and answer any query that the user might have.
Most Chatbots and Virtual Assistants have pre-programmed answering systems that follow specific rules and patterns while answering. Powerful AI has enabled some voice assistants to interact with the user and respond appropriately. With more usage, they even improve themselves.
- Auto Correct and Auto prediction
There are many softwares available nowadays that check grammar and spelling of the text we type and save us from embarrassing spelling and grammatical mistakes in our emails, texts or other documents. NLP plays an important role in those softwares and functions.
This is one of the most widely used applications of NLP. These softwares offer a lot of features like suggesting synonyms, correcting grammar and spellings, rephrasing sentences and giving clarity to the document and can even predict the tone of the sentence that might be implied by the user.
Auto prediction is also a feature developed through NLP where the computer suggests automatic prediction of the text we have started typing. This saves time of the user and makes the job easier for them
- Email Filtering
Most of the professional work is done through emails and it would be quite a hassle if all the emails we received were not segregated into different sections. Gmail classifies all the emails into primary, social and promotional sections. Even all the spam emails are sent to a different section so that they do not flood our inbox.
This is done with the help of text classification, which is a technique of NLP. It has definitely helped us save time and not miss any important Email that might have gotten lost if all the useless emails started accumulating in our inbox.
- Sentiment Analysis
Human speech could be quite hard to interpret as it involves expressions and sentiments beyond literal meanings. Expressions like sarcasm, threat, exclamation etc. are often very hard to be recognised by the computer.
But, with the help of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) which is a subfield of Natural Language Processing, the machine is able to catch on to different sentiments that might be insisted on through the user’s command.
Through sentiment analysis, one can analyse customer reactions, handle social media disputes by eradicating negative comments and getting insights from the customer base of any business.
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