Natural language processing (NLP)
Natural language processing is the field of AI that works with human language: understanding, translating, summarising and generating text or speech. Large language models are its best-known recent product.
In one line, for a 12-year-old
NLP is the part of AI that helps computers read, write and understand the way people talk.
An example
Automatic captions on a video call and a tool that sorts customer emails by topic both use NLP.
Why it matters to people
Language tools work best in the languages they were trained on. French, Indigenous languages and regional accents often get less attention, which affects who is served well.