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SwiftKey launches world’s first AI-powered software keyboard for Android

Well, Swiftkey’s new keyboard uses a neural network to think more like a human – and it’s nearly too good at it. Knowing this similarity allows SwiftKey to also predict “home” when you have typed “Let’s meet at”.

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Artificial intelligence technology being developed by SwiftKey could eventually write whole sentences, or maybe even whole emails, for you.

The current version of SwiftKey Neural is in alpha and is very barebones. It learns your writing style over time to speed up typing, and even predicts the next word before you’ve started typing it – this is partly based on historical patterns, but it also scans texts from a myriad of sources to “learn” popular orders in which words are placed. SwiftKey Neural Alpha has made its way to the Google Play Store, and instead of using word frequency calculators (n-gram model) to predict your next words, it’s more contextually aware of the sentence you’re typing…

While n-gram technology does give accurate predictions for common phrases, there are inherent restrictions as it doesn’t look at the actual meaning of words – it can only accurately predict words it has seen before in a set sequence.

These types of neural networks are typically found in large servers, but SwiftKey is using it on a smartphone keyboard.

It also understands that “Let’s meet at the airport” has a similar sentence structure to “Let’s chat at the office”. You can’t sync it with your SwiftKey account, so there’s no personalization.

An artificial neural network is a model of machine learning that attempts to replicate the functionality of a brain.

I interviewed SwiftKey CTO Ben Medlock onstage at the recent Re.

We’re extremely excited to see what comes next, and are hoping Neural will soon be integrated into SwiftKey proper.

‘We envision that this powerful technology will fundamentally change the way we type on smartphones over the next five years.

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‘It’s just possible that using this approach the keyboard of the future could know you so well, it’d accurately predict your entire messages for you, in your tone of voice, reflecting the events that go on in your daily life’. However, it has limitations because it can’t understand the underlying meaning of words and has to be taught.

SwiftKey has unveiled a keyboard that claims to be able to think like a human. Using artificial intelligence the London-based firm's system can complete whole sentences and someday entire emails for you