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<ul><li>In an interview with Business Insider, <keyword id="6567188" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kavin-Bharti-Mittal">Kavin Bharti Mittal</keyword>, founder &amp; CEO of <keyword id="1868750" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hike-Messenger">Hike Messenger</keyword> said that he wants to employ psychologists to understand “why people do what they do?” </li><li>The game designers will be working on the Hike’s new social experience — <keyword id="8713739" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="hikeland">HikeLand</keyword>. </li><li>Hike is also looking for a crypto economist. The role demands digital skills including blockchain, consensus algorithms, bonding curves, mining.</li></ul>While the world is moving towards mainstream IT roles and emerging technologies like AI and data science, instant messaging platform Hike is looking to hire game designers, economists and psychologists. In an interview with Business Insider, Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder &amp; CEO of Hike Messenger said that he wants to employ ‘smart’ people to fit into the company’s fast-paced culture. “One thing about us is, we like keeping our teams small. We’re 150 people and we like that size. We’ll be hiring game designers, economists and psychologists — for a deeper understanding about why people do what they do?” Mittal said. The game designers will be working on the Hike’s new social experience — HikeLand, he added. He said that Hike has no ties with the offline world — which explains the lower demand for technology roles. <div type="Youtube" id="yU0IcyPgCpU" title="Kavin Mittal, Founder &amp; CEO, Hike shares his 2020 vision" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yU0IcyPgCpU/mqdefault.jpg"></div>

 In his recent tweet, Mittal also advertised for the opening of a crypto economist for Hike. The role demands digital skills including blockchain, consensus algorithms, bonding curves, and <keyword id="179198" type="TECHNOLOGY" weightage="20" keywordseo="data-mining">data mining</keyword>. “It is someone who can help us explore and design a new type of blockchain economy. You should have a deep understanding of blockchain, consensus algorithms, bonding curves, mining and more,” he tweeted. <div type="twitter" handle="kavinbm" handlename="Kavin Bharti Mittal" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1215423641204088833/eVf11liQ_normal.jpg" favoritecount="177" retweetcount="39" status="🙅‍♀️We're hiring a Crypto Economist! 🙅‍♂️ Someone to help us explore &amp; design a new type of blockchain economy. Yo… https://t.co/21QXvKoEfx" createdat="1581054102000" id="1225655858308116481"></div>

 Mittal also added that the company is looking for typical quintessential technical roles — including front-end engineers, backend engineers, ML scientists, UX designers. However, he emphasised that they hire very ‘selectively.’ “We are looking to expand our team but we hire very selectively. That’s because we like running small teams. We will at maximum add 50 people in 2020 — taking the total headcount to 200 employees,” he said. The seven-year old chatting platform is now set to launch its new feature with enhanced user experience called HikeLand. The company is also looking to experiment with revenues this year — to trade off between what can be offered free and what has to be kept as a paid service. Mittal claims that the messenger app had over two million active users every week, as of December 2019. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/exclusive-kavin-mittal-says-hike-will-look-to-make-money-this-year-heres-how/articleshow/73924944.cms">Exclusive: Kavin Mittal says Hike will look to make money this year —here's how</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/hike-takes-on-snapchat-launches-in-built-camera-with-face-recognition-skills-and-other-new-features/articleshow/55473215.cms">Hike takes on Snapchat, launches in-built camera with face recognition skills and other new features</a>

Hike is hiring game designers, economists and psychologists to build a ‘smart’ team

<keyword id="1868750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Hike-Messenger">Hike Messenger</keyword>, which has paved its way to become the biggest local messaging app in India with around 70 million users, has announced a special Diwali gift. 
 The company has launched exclusive discount coupons from over 100 top brands like <keyword id="18635" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Amazon">Amazon</keyword>, <keyword id="6357395" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="eBay">eBay</keyword>, <keyword id="6388367" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Jabong">Jabong</keyword>, <keyword id="2629806" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="askmeBazaar">AskMeBazaar</keyword>, <keyword id="569372" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dominos">Domino’s</keyword>, <keyword id="58553" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Pizza-Hut">Pizza Hut</keyword>, which will allow users to buy and gift items or order food from their favorite restaurants. The deals are exclusive and have been customised only for the users of Hike Messenger. 
 
The interface designed for these coupons is easy and user friendly interface, one just needs to open the messenger and tap on the ‘Coupons’ chat on the home screen. Afterwards, users can simply tap on ‘Get coupon code’; a code would be generated, which can then be redeemed on the brand’s mobile site, website or app. 
 “We’ve been working on some really exciting Diwali gifts for our users and we’re finally super excited to roll them out. First up, we’re launching Coupons to our entire user base just in time for Diwali. Over 70 million users on hike can now experience some amazing, exclusive discounts across a 100 brands only on hike. In addition, we’ve had added some great, fun stickers and also a few exciting Chat Themes just for Diwali so that hikers have a fantastic experience during one of India’s biggest festivals,” said <keyword id="6567188" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kavin-Bharti-Mittal">Kavin Bharti Mittal</keyword>, who is the Founder and CEO of Hike Messenger.

Hike goes the eCommerce way

Hike today launched payments on its platform making it the first messaging app to do so. The messenger is enabling <keyword id="6358921" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="UPI">UPI</keyword> payments, <keyword id="4673396" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="hike-wallet">Hike wallet</keyword> and Recharge on its platform. The biggest update of <keyword id="1868750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hike-Messenger">Hike messenger</keyword> called <keyword id="4673397" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="hike-5-0">Hike 5.0</keyword> is Hike Wallet, the easiest and most fun way to send and receive money. <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="57810828" title="Co-working spacesare growing even as start-ups increasing fail in India" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Mar 24, 2017, 4:30 PM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>
 There are 3 main aspects of Hike Wallet: 1. Free and instant money transfer: a. Bank-to-bank via UPI: With Unified Payments Interface (UPI) support enabled in Hike 5.0, users can now do free and instant bank-to-bank transfers with their friends. What’s exciting is that this works even if their friends aren't on Hike. b. Wallet to Wallet: For those who don’t actively use a bank account, Hike still allows you to send and receive money with your friends through the Wallet. <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="59181977" title="Exclusive: Rajesh Sawhney banks on the people who make up companies with the right product market fit" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Jun 16, 2017, 8:56 PM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>
2. <keyword id="4677885" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="blue-packets">Blue Packets</keyword>: A Blue Packet is simply a beautifully designed envelope that users can insert money into and send to their friends. Users can choose from over 10 different beautifully crafted envelopes and also add a personalised message to it to celebrate those special occasions. A Blue Packet can be sent to an individual or even a group of friends. If you give Blue Packets to a group of your friends, you can have a little fun and select how many people in the group should get it. It works on a first come first serve basis and a Blue Packet when sent expires in 24 hours. <div type="embedgroup"> <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="59213872" title="Exclusive: Radhika Aggarwal, Co-founder, ShopClues says the Focus is now on Fashion" rank="1.0" kind="RELATED" publishDate="Jun 19, 2017, 11:47 AM" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div></div>
3. Recharge: With Hike 5.0, users can now recharge their phones and pay their postpaid bill right from inside Hike. This removes the need to have one more app just for paying mobile bills, thereby saving space on their phone and removing the need for them to add yet another app. With more than 100 million registered users currently on Hike Messenger, this launch makes Hike the largest UPI based platform in India overnight. Yes Bank is the banking partner enabling Hike to launch UPI and the Wallet.

Hike Messenger launches payments on its platform; becomes the biggest UPI platform with 100 million users

<keyword id="44033" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="hike">Hike</keyword> messenger, which is India’s first homegrown messaging platform, will soon launch its app in eight vernacular Indian languages viz. Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. The new languages would be launched tomorrow, 23rd December 2015. 
 
With this launch, people and communities across the length and breadth of India would be able to be in touch with their family, friends and contacts in their own native languages. 
 “Today, we’re excited to launch hike in 8 local languages. For the first time ever millions of Indians will be able to seamlessly chat in their local languages only on hike. Every single hiker will now be able to choose a local language and also with it, see a special keyboard that they can use built specifically for that language. One cannot build for India without understanding the enormous diversity in the country. This is another big step towards catering to that diversity to bring India online,” said <keyword id="6567188" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Kavin-Bharti-Mittal">Kavin Bharti Mittal</keyword>, CEO &amp; Founder, Hike messenger. 
 
<a href="http://www.androidlollipop.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hike_messenger_logo_blue.jpg">Image source</a>

Hike goes multilingual to suit Indian users

<ul><li><keyword id="866223" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kavin-Mittal">Kavin Mittal</keyword> plans to introduce a new "social experience" to Hike in 2020 called <keyword id="8713739" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="hikeland">HikeLand</keyword>.</li><li>In an interview with Business Insider, Mittal said that Hike will be experimenting with revenue this year to find out what should be paid and what can be offered for free.</li><li>According to him, the <keyword id="8713742" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="virtual-economy">virtual economy</keyword> is an untapped golden goose in India with microtransactions set to increase as payments become seamless.</li></ul>From being a super app that offers games, news and the ability to send messages, Hike has unpacked itself to focus on the chat experience. Last year, Hike CEO and founder Kavin Bharti Mittal launched Hike Sticker Chat — a messenger app focused on emojis to communicate with close friends, peers and significant others. In an interview with Business Insider, Mittal shared that he plans on "creating a new social experience" to help monetise the app called HikeLand. And, it has nothing to do with e-commerce. "In 2020, this is going to be the year that we start experimenting with revenue," he said and it doesn't necessarily need to reflect in the real world. Launched in 2012, <keyword id="1868750" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hike-Messenger">Hike Messenger</keyword> has gone from being a super app to a sticker chat with 2 million weekly active users as of December 2019. <div type="Youtube" id="yU0IcyPgCpU" title="Kavin Mittal, Founder &amp; CEO, Hike shares his 2020 vision" thumbUrl="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yU0IcyPgCpU/mqdefault.jpg"></div>

 Revenue is just another feature In 2020, Hike plans to find out what consumers are willing to pay for and what can be given away for free. "Revenue is one more feature. Building revenue is also a part of the product development process," said Mittal. The aim is to take Hike Sticker Chat into a new era using technology to build an upgraded user experience around the <keyword id="8335972" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="hikemoji">HikeMoji</keyword>. Mittal describes it as, "a new user experience beyond messaging that's a safe place for people to hang out." He explains that the HikeMoji will be able to do multiple things within HikeLand. That will be the ecosystem around which Hike will build a virtual economy business model. Virtual economy is the untapped golden goose Mittal believes that since payments have not become seamless, microtransactions are going to emerge in a big way — and the virtual economy is the golden goose that no-one has tapped into. "Virtual economy business model is the one that's completely untapped in this market," he claimed. According to him, as virtual communities emerge and multiple verticals are created, economies can be integrated into them to add a layer to the consumer experience. Hike — as a 'bits-based' business — has no ties to the offline world, according to Mittal. There are no warehouses, no logistics and no delivery mechanisms. "We have already seen this [virtual economy] happen. More in the East than in the West. And, that's the model we're going to pursue," he explained. Hanging out online Hike's peak usage is between 10:00 pm to 12:00 am. According to Mittal, it's not because people are messaging or sending stickers at the time — it's simply because they want to hang out online with their friends after they're done with "family time". "If we want to build a safe place for people to hang out in 2020 for close friends or with their significant other, what would that look like? And, that's the big step that we're taking with HikeMoji — and HikeLand," said Mittal. Doubling down on existing bets In addition to launching HikeLand, Mittal will be doubling down on the bets that he's already made. In 2018, the Hike super app was unbundled into two verticals — messaging and gaming. On one side was Hike Sticker Chat and on the other was investment, a gaming platform called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/zostel-and-zorooms-founder-has-a-new-fund-for-game-developers/articleshow/70301357.cms">WinZo</a>.. News, on the other hand, was dropped altogether. "We have to double down on both these products. How do we get Sticker Chat to a much bigger user base? How do we land HikeMoji and HikeLand extremely well? On the WinZo side, how do we grow the scale we have today to be three to four times bigger," said Mittal In addition to growing what's already working for the company, Hike will continue to work on the innovation pipeline as well. Nonetheless, the return of the super app doesn't seem to be on the cards. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/zostel-and-zorooms-founder-has-a-new-fund-for-game-developers/articleshow/70301357.cms">A new $1.5 million fund is looking for good game developers in India</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/hike-takes-on-snapchat-launches-in-built-camera-with-face-recognition-skills-and-other-new-features/articleshow/55473215.cms">Hike takes on Snapchat, launches in-built camera with face recognition skills and other new features</a>

Exclusive: Kavin Mittal says Hike will look to make money this year —here's how

In a bid to take on Snapchat, <keyword id="1868750" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hike-Messenger">Hike messenger</keyword> just launched three new exciting features and now users will be able to share their lives through photos and videos. 
 
Hike launched three services-Stories, Camera and Live Filters for India. Through its Stories feature, people will be able to share real time moments with their friends through photos and videos. The stories will vanish 48 hours after being posted. 
 
Also, the in-built camera will help people to snap photos right inside from the app. Talking about Filters, Hike will have 12 Live Filters. 
 “Hike has become the place for the youth of India where they can be themselves. One of our goals of 2016 has been to bring photos at the centre of Hike and with Stories, Filters and Camera, we are just doing that,” said <keyword id="866223" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kavin-Mittal">Kavin Mittal</keyword>, Founder and CEO, Hike. 
 
If you want to create your story on Hike, you have to follow this: 
 
1. Swipe to the Stories tab 
2. Tap on Camera to create new stories and you can use other features to make it interesting 
3. Post!

Hike takes on Snapchat, launches in-built camera with face recognition skills and other new features

<ul><li>Today, chatbots are making their presence felt across the entire business value chain. </li><li>They are enhancing customer support by helping customers explore products and services in a more seamless fashion. </li><li>New-age bots are redefining critical aspects such as <keyword id="1766716" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="customer-engagement">customer engagement</keyword>, sales, marketing, and profitability for businesses in the online realm, writes <keyword id="6618219" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="neha-kulwal">Neha Kulwal</keyword>, Country Manager- <keyword id="7882933" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Admitad-India">Admitad India</keyword>.</li></ul> There is one thing that you commonly find when you go online. There, right in the corner of your screen. Unobtrusive, for all intents and purposes, and yet somehow drawing your attention to itself. Yes, you guessed it right: a chat screen. The window that pops up as soon as you visit the landing page of a website, asking you about what it can help you with. Most online businesses today have some chat feature or another that was initially handled by human teams. This function has since been taken over by chatbots that are making their presence felt across the entire business value chain. To begin with, they are enhancing customer support by helping customers explore products and services in a more seamless fashion. Chatbots are also used to provide answers to frequently-asked after-sales queries and redirecting buyers to the most relevant means of grievance redressal. Of late, however, new-age bots are going a step ahead and redefining critical aspects such as customer engagement, sales, marketing, and profitability for businesses in the online realm. Botting it up: How Samsung used chatbots to drive higher customer engagement and better leads Take, for instance, the Twitter chatbot deployed by Samsung in Australia and Canada. Aimed at helping users familiarise themselves with its new 4K UHD TV technology, the chatbot addressed customer queries around the new technology. More importantly, the brand used the chatbot as a means to engage prospective buyers by identifying their areas of interest (sports, movies, gaming, and TV) and inviting them to start interacting with the bot for enhanced end-user experiences and personalised product recommendations. Samsung received a high engagement rate, with 89% of the participants following through with the chatbot experience. It also drastically reduced the cost per lead for the brand, bringing it down to barely 25% of what its marketing endeavours typically cost. A study in analytics: How the Qlik Insight Bot is helping businesses use data to optimise operations Chatbots, however, are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the ongoing ‘bot revolution’ is concerned. Another prominent example of how bots are helping drive better outcomes for businesses is the Qlik Insight Bot that is built on top of the open API framework and Associative Engine® from Qlik, a domain-leading data integration platform. The mobile bot leverages AI-driven analytics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to identify conversational patterns over time and facilitate more customised data analytics experiences. This allows business users to make their data queries using conversational chat-based prompts and get the relevant insights into important business questions by simply asking questions on chat. Such an insight-driven approach to analytics allows companies to empower their employees with data at the point of need, thus helping them make more accurate decisions to drive profitability and improve business performance. Messenger bots: Helping online promoters and brands to drive better revenues Innovative bots with advanced capabilities are also providing online businesses with a unique opportunity to engage with users to communicate their value propositions and promote their offerings for better lead generation and conversion. Telegram, for instance, has introduced a bot that allows uploaded text to be automatically converted into machine voice. This facilitates another layer of engagement, enabling brands to convert prospective customers into buyers – by targeting them at the platforms where they spend the most time. There are several interesting developments on the publisher side as well. New-age tools, such as Admitad Bot, are also being integrated into Telegram to add more value to the digital marketing value chain. Using these tools, for instance, online publishers – such as bloggers, social media influencers, YouTubers, and podcasters – can improve their profitability by seamlessly creating deep links to the best affiliate campaigns. These links are designed for robust functionality across multiple traffic sources and are handpicked from thousands of online offers from across the globe. All publishers need to do to generate these deeplinks is adding the Bot in their Telegram app, login, choose an ad space from the options presented, and send the bot the website link for the relevant product. These chatbots can also intimate publishers when a product category is “hot”, along with providing information about the commission rates. Such end-to-end support on messenger bots not only helps publishers augment business growth and profitability but also enables brands to maximise their consumer outreach and sale revenues. It also enables brands to achieve better CPA results for their marketing spending, as affiliate payouts are only released once the desired action (clickthrough, sale, etc.) has been completed. Why is this important? Because online messaging apps have emerged as, arguably, the medium of choice for new-age consumers to interact and engage with each other in this digital-first age. Here are some statistics for scale: WhatsApp has more than 1.6 billion active users, while Facebook Messenger and WeChat have 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion users, respectively. Newer messaging apps are also finding great traction and adoption with users; Telegram had 200 million monthly active users by March 2018, while Hike claimed to have 100 million users in 2018. The growing importance of messenger bots in the digital marketing value chain is further corroborated by recent performance statistics. As per the data analysed by Admitad India, advertisers drove sales to the tune of $10,000 through chat-based messengers during the first six months of 2019 alone. In a country that is rapidly moving online on the back of rapid digital adoption, this represents a unique and high-value affiliate marketing opportunity for brands. If these aforementioned examples are anything to go by, the future will not just be digital – it will be driven by bots. Online businesses across sectors will need to stay ahead of this curve by integrating such bots into their existing processes to streamline and optimise their operations. Doing so is not just a matter of luxury anymore, but is rapidly becoming a critical business imperative. -- This article has been written by Neha Kulwal, Country Manager, Admitad India

I ‘Bot’ That: How innovative bots are helping online businesses optimize their operations

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Samantha Lee/Business InsiderNecip Fazil Ayan and Laurent Landowski.</div></div></div><ul><li>Facebook is on a mission to help people who speak different languages understand one another.</li><li>It's using M Suggestions, its virtual assistant in Messenger, to translate real-time conversations, and has just added support for French.</li><li>Business Insider spoke to Facebook employees working on the project about the tech behind it, and its potential to radically affect online communication.</li></ul> In 2015, virtual assistants were the Next Big Thing.Every major tech company had one, from Apple's Siri to Amazon's Alexa and Google Now, which would later become the more fully fledged Google Assistant. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/26/facebook-is-adding-a-personal-assistant-called-m-to-your-messenger-app/">Facebook entered the space in August that year with the announcement of M</a> - a chatbot that lived inside its Messenger app, and which users could ask for just about anything, from hiking recommendations to help buying flowers. But while the likes of Alexa and Google Assistant have exploded over the last few years, finding their way into everything from fridges to cars, M - in its original incarnation - was never widely rolled out to Facebook's users. Instead, it morphed into M Suggestions - an AI enhancement that hovers inside users' Messenger chats with their friends, and offers contextual suggestions based on their conversations - from making payments to initiating video calls. These recommendations have historically been relatively incremental - send a funny GIF! Attach a sticker! - but Facebook is now leaning hard into translations in Messenger, and using M Suggestions as the engine to do so.It's by far the most significant application of the technology behind M Suggestions to date - one that has the potential to radically reshape how hundreds of millions of people communicate in real-time on Facebook. Business Insider spoke to some of the team at Facebook working on the project, to learn more about the tech underpinning the ambitious project and their vision for its future."At Facebook we have a lot of different cultures and a lot of diversity in our team ... we are all speaking different languages, and we know how frustrating it can be not to be able to communicate ... in your own languages," said Laurent Landowski, a Facebook product manager. "So being able to also really provide M Suggestions for translation to the world is something that we're super proud of."<h2>M is an AI assistant that lives inside other conversations</h2>Every time you send a message to a friend via Messenger - assuming it's not an encrypted "Secret Message" - it's being scanned by Facebook.That doesn't mean an actual Facebook employee is reading it, of course. Instead, Facebook's automated systems are parsing the message, trying to understand the intent of the message. This effort is partly underpinned by the tech Facebook acquired when it bought natural language startup Wit.AI back in 2015; cofounder Landowksi is now the product manager of M Suggestions at Facebook. If one of Facebook's AI neural net models identifies the message between you and your friend as something it can add context to, M Suggestions will automatically spring into action. If you mention a song, it might prompt you to play it on Spotify; if you're discussing multiple potential activities in a group, it might suggest creating a poll.And it learns over time what different people utilize it for, and caters its responses accordingly; the version of M that a GIF-addict sees will be very different to what appears for someone who is more restrained in their messaging.When it comes to quick replies - suggested responses M offers users in conversations to save them time - it even uses users' conversation histories as a training data to teach the AI how they speak, making the responses ("yes" versus "yeah" or "yep" or "yah") sound authentically like their voice.Its unique positioning - inside users' existing conversations with other people, rather than dedicated human-to-AI chat windows - means it risks being invasive or jarring. As such, Facebook has moved slowly adding suggestions to M, Landowski said. "We have been working on trying to improve and really focus on the delight and relevance as opposed to the number of suggestions we could be suggesting."He added: "It is super easy to lose user trust."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Facebook</div></div></div><h2>Translations aren't easy - but the pay-off is huge</h2>M Suggestions has thus far offered fun enrichments to conversations, but it's hardly transformative. Where that changes is translations.Facebook has provided language translations on its core social network for years, first via traditional phrase-based translation techniques before migrating to a more advanced AI-powered neural net translation system in August 2017. However, users who wanted to be able to talk across language barriers in real time were out of luck until earlier this year, when Facebook launched the first Spanish-English translations in Messenger, underpinned by M Translations. The company followed it up with the announcement this week that it was adding French.While Facebook positions Messenger at least in part as a way to stay in contact with the people users are closest to, translations opens it up to assisting people who may never have interacted before - like in Marketplace, Facebook's peer-to-peer sales platform. "You see more and more ways where translations can be applied, not only in your personal messaging but also like in the Marketplace, buyer-and-seller-type of messaging, that can unlock a lot of further opportunities for use," said Landowski, a native French speaker from Paris.But translation isn't easy. Languages are always changing and shifting, evolving as slang becomes common parlance, and the problem is especially acute on an informal, real-time platform like Messenger. Facebook's language team has an "active taskforce working to adapt its models to the type of data that Messenger provides, said Necip Fazil Ayan, head of Facebook's language and translation technologies team."This is one of the hardest problems we have to deal with while working on translations at Facebook, and it's not a solved problem, making our systems more robust to informal language including slang," he said."It's a dynamic language right, and people keep inventing stuff ... my best example instead of just saying 'happy birthday,' [they] start introducing lots of P's or Y's or I's all over the place."Facebook's unprecedented digital archives of billions of users' public and private conversations means it has a vast dataset with which to train its AI - but some languages have more material available than others. "One of the biggest challenges we're dealing with, both in terms of language understanding and translation perspective, is the set of what we call 'low resource languages.' As you can imagine, all the machine learning models require a lot of data to become accurate ... and we don't have that luxury for a lot of the languages we are dealing with," Ayan said.And then there's the issue of bias. AI systems are only as good as the data they are trained on, and when there are human biases built into the data, it can creep into the results. "Our data is biased ... we are actively working on this at Facebook ... in machine learning this is a very hot area and it's a very difficult area, and it's going to take a while cleaning up the data from that type of bias or learning where the bias is." But for all the challenges, automated real-time translations offer Facebook a way to have a have a fairly profound effect on the way people around the world communicate. "I really don't want language to become a barrier when people are expressing their opinions or when people are trying to reach other people to get different perspectives," said Ayan, a native Turkish speaker who grew up in the country."So that's the dream, we are going to break down the language barriers and that's my personal mission here."<h2>'It's hard from an AI perspective to be able to create a fully automated assistant that can do everything'</h2>Facebook now describes the original version of M as an experiment, one that provided valuable insight into the kind of things users utilise chatbots for but was never intended as a competitor to Siri et al, and never scaled beyond 2,000-odd users in the Bay Area. (In contrast, more than 100 million people interact with M Suggestions a month as of November 2017, a spokesperson said.)"It's hard from an AI perspective to be able to create a fully automated assistant that can do everything,"Landowksi said, "We basically realized that people, especially in Messenger, they really want to focus on the communication [assistance that M offered] ... it was really about trying to be where they are, which is their actual conversations. Instead of talking to an assistant directly it was all about focusing on the communications."But there have been rumours circulating for months about Facebook building a smart speaker in the vein of the Amazon Echo of Google Home, with a voice-controlled AI assistant built in.It was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-wont-launch-portal-smart-speaker-f8-2018-3">a no-show at Facebook's annual F8 conference in May 2018</a>, but speculation was bolstered after a reverse engineer <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17765530/facebook-speech-recognition-aloha-voice-testing-app">found references hidden in Facebook's code for an "Aloha" voice feature</a>."We're exploring everything," Landowski said when asked about whether Facebook was currently looking at speech recognition."Speech is also an interesting way to actually interact with an assistant. We cannot comment more on exactly what we do and what we test, but definitely we are working and trying to improve this."Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at <a href="https://twitter.com/robaeprice">@robaeprice</a>. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-tip-business-insider-securely-guide-signal-securedrop-2017-6">contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop</a>. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-new-iphone-xr-xs-max-september-2018-9">Watch Apple unveil the new iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

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