AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Going forward, Facebook's going to be applying that same technology to pictures and video, the service's lifeblood. And it has the potential to make Facebook so much better - and give it a leg up on the wildly popular Google Photos, which uses artificial intelligence to help you sort your pictures.
This is clearly a little ways off. But Facebook points to that translation service as a clear example of how artificial intelligence and machine learning are already getting put to work helping people communicate. And Facebook says that its developers are doing 50 times more AI experiments now every day than they were a year ago.
Still, Facebook is thinking on a ten-year roadmap. And today's AI experiments are tomorrow's Facebook app improvements.
Here's how Facebook is showing off artificial intelligence.