#168 Google Bard Refuses to Translate, Launching Slator Answers

This week Diego Bartolome, Founder of sintetic.ai, joined us on SlatoPod to talk about empowering companies to achieve more with generative artificial intelligence, including Slator with Slator Answers.

Diego discusses how he collaborated with Slator to create a chat interface that allows Slator subscribers to question an AI model specifically trained on our research, podcast transcripts, and thousands of articles. Florian gives a brief demonstration of Slator Answers’ natural language querying abilities and puts the model on the spot by asking a question in German.

Esther takes a look at a graphic from Slator’s 2023 Language Industry Report on company names in the language industry and reveals top terms, trends, and themes. The article concluded that the top three terms are language, translations, and services.

Florian touches on Google's recent focus on large language models (LLMs) and their efforts to compete with OpenAI. In a research paper, Google claims that the PaLM 2 model outperforms their own Google Translate in machine translation across all locales.

Google's chatbot, Bard, was released in February and is expanding to 180 countries, aiming to support 40 languages. When testing Bard, the LLM declined to translate from Japanese to English, stating that it is still learning. Additionally, Bard provided slightly different responses when asked about its abilities, such as generating subtitles.

K-pop star, Lee Hyun, used YouTube’s early access multi-track audio feature to release his song in six languages simultaneously. The singer performed in all six languages, with AI used to correct pronunciation and ensure a smooth and accent-free result.

US-based media localization company, Visual Data, has acquired Eva Localisation, a France-based dubbing and accessibility provider. The acquisition expands Visual Data's global presence, as Eva brings dubbing studios in France, Germany, and Spain, along with expertise in audiobooks and podcasts.