Skip to main content

Meta’s new AI research may boost translations on Facebook, Instagram

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced a new AI model today that can translate hundreds of languages, and its research is expected to help improve language translations on its social media apps, specifically Facebook and Instagram.

On Wednesday, Meta unveiled its new AI model, NLLB-200. NLLB stands for No Language Left Behind, which is a Meta project that endeavors to “develop high-quality machine translation capabilities for most of the world’s languages.” The AI model that came from that project, NLLB-200, can translate 200 languages.

200 languages within a single AI model: A breakthrough in high-quality machine translation

In a separate blog post that further details NLLB-200’s capabilities, Meta mentioned that this latest AI research (specifically its “modeling techniques and learnings from the project”) are already being used to “improve and extend translations on Facebook, Instagram, and Wikipedia.”

Recommended Videos

The blog post also notes that “research advancements” from the NLLB project are expected to “support more than 25 billion translations served every day on Facebook News Feed, Instagram” and Meta’s other platforms. But how will all this play out in terms of how users experience some of their favorite social media platforms? Meta did offer up a few possibilities:

“Imagine visiting a favorite Facebook group, coming across a post in Igbo or Luganda, and being able to understand it in your own language with just a click of a button. Highly accurate translations in more languages could also help to spot harmful content and misinformation, protect election integrity, and curb instances of online sexual exploitation and human trafficking.”

To get a sense of some of the languages supported by NLLB-200, you can view a demo online that features children’s books written in languages like Indonesian and Burmese and then choose a language translation option to translate the stories to your native language.

Anita George
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anita George has been writing for Digital Trends' Computing section since 2018. So for almost six years, Anita has written…
Trump allowed to return to Facebook and Instagram
Trump stylized image

Meta is ending its suspension of Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram, allowing the former president to start posting again as he eyes a return to the White House via the 2024 election.

Trump was suspended indefinitely from the social media sites shortly after the riots at the Capitol in January 2021.

Read more
Instagram to soon let creators make NFTs and sell them to fans
Series of four mobile screenshots showing the selling of collectibles on Instagram.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on your favorite social media platforms are apparently here to stay. At least that seems to be the case for one Meta-owned platform.

On Wednesday, as part of its Creator Week event, Meta announced that Instagram will soon let creators make and sell their own NFTs on the app itself. The new ability was described as another way for fans to support their favorite creators.

Read more
Having trouble accessing your Instagram account? You’re not alone
Instagram being used on an iPhone.

Instagram appears to be down right now, but the glitch many users are reporting is an odd one. It's not just that users are having trouble accessing the popular photo- and video-sharing app, but they're also having trouble accessing their own accounts and have reported being hit with account suspension notices.

On Monday morning, the apparent Instagram outage was reported by users on Twitter and on Downdetector. Both sites included numerous reports saying that users suddenly lost access to their IG accounts and were given account suspension notices.

Read more