Skip to main content

Google Launches Betas Of New Machine Learning APIs


Cloud Natural Language API and Cloud Speech API opened as betas for analysing large chunks of text and speech.  Looking to sell customers better tools for extracting value from large sets of unstructured data, Google has released beta versions of two new machine learnings APIs for its Google Cloud Platform.





The tools, Cloud Natural Language API and Cloud Speech API, are designed for digging in to gargantuan text and audio files and pulling out information on specified topics such as people, locations, dates and events.

This mean organisations can carry out large analyses of text and audio to produce fine-tuned information on customers or users.


“You can use it to understand sentiment about your product on social media or parse intent from customer conversations happening in a call centre or a messaging app,” explained Google on the Cloud Natural Language API product page.

“You can analyse text uploaded in your request or integrate with your document storage on Google Cloud Storage.”

British online supermarket and tech company Ocado said it’s already using the Natural Language API, and it’s a viable replacement to its own machine learning language analyser.

“NL API has shown it can accelerate our offering in the natural language understanding area and is a viable alternative to a custom model we had built for our initial use case,” said Ocado’s head of data Dan Nelson.

Speech

Google Cloud Speech API lets developers convert audio to text by applying neural network models in an API. Google said that the API recognises over 80 languages and variants.

“You can transcribe the text of users dictating to an application’s microphone, enable command-and-control through voice, or transcribe audio files, among many other use cases,” said Google.

“Enterprises and developers now have access to speech-to-text conversion in over 80 languages, for both apps and IoT devices. Cloud Speech API uses the voice recognition technology that has been powering your favorite products such as Google Search and Google Now.”

More than 5,000 companies signed up for Google’s Speech API alpha, including video chat app HyperConnect that uses Cloud Speech and Translate API to transcribe and translate conversations between people who speak different languages.

The Speech API also support word hints, meaning custom words or phrases by context can be added to API calls to improve recognition. An example of this may be in smart TV listening for ‘rewind’ and ‘fast-forward’.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Security Alert; Bart Ransomware Bypasses Corporate Firewalls

A new ransomware variant has emerged that’s similar to widespread threats such as Dridex 220 and Locky Affid=3, but uses a security-evading technique that may allow it to attack organisations protected from other malware, according to computer security researchers. Ransomware has spread quickly in the last few months, as a number of payouts have attracted cyber-criminals to the technique.
Post a Comment
Read more

Floods Leave Many Dead in Southern Ghana

Four days of heavy and steady rain has left at least 10 people dead in the south of Ghana. The streets of Accra have been left under water after the torrential downpours caused widespread flooding earlier this week. The nation's capital was hit bit 185mm of rain on Sunday, which is more than they would expect for the entire month of June. This is the wettest month of the year with an average rainfall of 178mm. Since the weekend a further 50mm of rain has fallen exacerbating the severe problems already faced. President John Dramani Mahama has surveyed the areas concerned. He was reported to have driven through several neighbourhoods on a motorcycle. Heavy downpours were also recorded 150km to the west of Accra in the Central Regional capital, Cape Coast where 10 people died in floods,  Sandy Amartey, regional coordinator of the National Disaster Management organisation, told AFP. "In all we have 10 to 12 who lost their lives during this rainy season." The rain...
Post a Comment
Read more

EC Slaps Apple With £11bn Irish Tax Bill

The European Commission (EC), as expected, has ordered the Irish government to recover up to €13 billion (£11bn) plus interest in “illegal tax benefits”. An investigation found Apple had been able to avoid taxation on almost all profits generated in the EU single market thanks to a structure which routed revenues through two “paper” headquarters in Ireland and minimal tax rates in the country. The EC says Apple only paid an effective corporate tax rate that fell from one percent in 2003 to 0.005 percent in 2014 – a rate which other companies in Ireland were not subjected to. This effectively amounted to state aid, the commission said. Apple tax amazon“Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules,” said Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who is in charge of competition policy. “The Commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than ...
Post a Comment
Read more