The new product is a Large Language Model (LLM) that “enables the translation of different types of content and documents”, with the possibility of interacting “a similar way you could interact with a human translator.” Widn.ai allows users to “to give instructions, to suggest corrections, and many other things”, on the translation of the texts.

The LLM comes at a time when “translation is going through a big transformation”, as Vasco Pedro stated during the press conference. According to him, “translation has been exposed to AI a little bit earlier than most other areas, and it's a good leading indicator of what will happen probably in a bunch of other areas three or five years from now.” Vasco Pedro also mentioned that Widn.ai is “a direct application of Tower LLM”, that won the world’s competition for best machine translator, which allows it to translate into 32 different languages. To the journalists, Vasco Pedro stated that Widn.ai “is potentially the first step in an increasing transformation of Unbabel into much more of an AI-only company.”

Nevertheless, the co-founder of Unbabel is aware that many people rely on human work for translations, but the times are changing. The rapidly changing “will create turbulence”, as people relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) reduces the human work in the translation sector.

The Portuguese LLM

Vasco Pedro revealed that he is happy that the "Portuguese government is taking AI seriously and is having a thoughtful approach to creating a national plan for AI”. To the press, Vasco Pedro shared that Unbabel has always advocated for the creation of a Portuguese LLM as It felt “achievable.” He believes that having a national LLM will allow Portugal to “maintain sovereignty in the long run, both for our culture and for our ability to be relevant in the world”, avoiding the need to be “dependent on third parties.”

Either way, Vasco Pedro adds that although supporting this kind of initiative, he believes that “There should be some entity that is able to articulate the collaboration and deployment of the LLM across the different services.”

Unbabel

The Portuguese company was founded in 2013 and is an AI translation platform that uses mechanisms such as Neural Machine Translation, combining it with machine learning and crowdsourced models.

Author

Deeply in love with music and with a guilty pleasure in criminal cases, Bruno G. Santos decided to study Journalism and Communication, hoping to combine both passions into writing. The journalist is also a passionate traveller who likes to write about other cultures and discover the various hidden gems from Portugal and the world. Press card: 8463. 

Bruno G. Santos