Google revealed on Thursday that powerful artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms were used to improve its Translate platform, adding 110 new languages for users.

The IT giant’s deployment of the PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) has enabled the largest expansion that Google Translate has ever experienced.

According to a press release, Isaac Caswell, senior software engineer at Google Translate, “from Cantonese to Q’eqchi’, these new languages represent more than 614 million speakers, opening up translations for around 8% of the world’s population.”

“Some are major world languages with over 100 million speakers,” Caswell said. “Others are spoken by small communities of Indigenous people, and a few have almost no native speakers but active revitalization efforts. About a quarter of the new languages come from Africa, representing our largest expansion of African languages to date, including Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof.”

Google Translate’s announcement highlighted several noteworthy additions, one of which being Cantonese. Caswell stated that Cantonese has “long been one of the most requested languages” for the tool, but adding it was difficult because it frequently overlaps with Mandarin in writing, making it “tricky to find data and train models.”

Afar, a tonal language spoken in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, and Shahmukhi, a variant of Punjabi that is the most spoken language in Pakistan, were also added. The release mentioned that Afar had the greatest volunteer community contributions.

The Isle of Man’s Celtic language, Manx, was also included when its final native speaker passed away in 1974, almost bringing the language to extinction. Thousands of speakers now exist on the island as a consequence of a revival campaign.

Caswell pointed out that since Tok Pisin is an English-based creole, app users who speak English should try translating into it since they “might be able to make out the meaning!” Tok Pisin is the primary language of Papua New Guinea. It was added to Google Translate.

In an effort to fulfill its previously stated 1,000 Languages Initiative, which commits the business to developing AI models supporting the 1,000 most widely spoken languages in the world, Google said it intends to gradually add more languages to Translate. According to the business, that process will accelerate even further when AI technologies like PaLM 2 develop.

“PaLM 2 was a key piece to the puzzle, helping Translate more efficiently learn languages that are closely related to each other, including languages close to Hindi, like Awadhi and Mardwadi, and French creoles like Seychellois Creole and Mauritian Creole,” Caswell stated.

“As technology advances, and as we continue to partner with expert linguists and native speakers, we’ll support even more language varieties and spelling conventions over time,” he said.

Microsoft had announced plans to release Keystone, a specialized Xbox cloud console, a few years back. The device, a little white box intended for Xbox game access via the company’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service, resembled a scaled-down version of the Xbox Series S. Though Microsoft ultimately abandoned their plans to release Keystone, we can get the greatest idea of what the Xbox cloud console may have looked like thanks to a recent patent.

The patent, which was discovered by Windows Central, shows that Keystone would have come with an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a power connector. There was a USB-A port, an Xbox button, and a button for connecting controllers on the front. The system rested on a circular “Hello from Seattle” plate made by Microsoft, which is also the same plate used by the larger Xbox Series X.

Microsoft principle designer Chris Kujawski is the named inventor of the 2022 patent. Leading the Xbox Series S / X console design was Kujawski.

Microsoft subsequently discontinued the Keystone device because it was unable to bring the price down to approximately $100, despite having once stated that it planned to release an Xbox streaming device in 2021. Keystone was first seen by Xbox CEO Phil Spencer in 2022 on his desk shelf. According to the official Xbox account on X, Keystone was a “old prototype.”

In a late 2022 interview, Spencer stated, “It was more expensive than we wanted it to be when we actually built it out with the hardware that we had inside,”  “We decided to focus that team’s effort on delivering the smart TV streaming app.”

Instead, Microsoft released an Xbox TV app. The Xbox TV app is compatible with Samsung TVs and monitors made after 2022 and up. It allows you to run games from Xbox Cloud Gaming and stream 1080p content at 60 frames per second.

In order to finance the expansion of its verified payout platform for businesses and consumers, Verituity has raised $18.8 million.

According to a press release from Verituity on Friday, June 21, the company plans to use the additional funds to expand into new markets like mortgage servicing and energy, enhance its growth in the banking and insurance sectors, and continue developing the machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models that underpin the platform.

According to the press release, Ben Turner, CEO of Verituity, “orchestrates billions of dollars in verified B2B and B2C payouts by empowering businesses and banks to deliver trusted and intelligent payments on-time to known individuals and businesses.” “As we continue on our journey to ultimately do away with checks and integrate intelligent, verified payouts into the very fabric of business disbursements, I look forward to working with our investors.”

According to the statement, the company’s technology adds intelligence to each disbursement and knows and validates every payer, payee, account, and transaction.

According to the release, doing so reduces risks, maximizes payout economics, and guarantees that digital payments are made on schedule, to the correct payee and payment account, and from the correct funding account.

Sandbox Industries and Forgepoint Capital spearheaded the company’s most recent round of funding.

According to a press statement from Sandbox Industries, Chris Zock, managing partner and co-CEO, Verituity’s “unique approach to embedding verification into payouts and handling the complexity of connecting legacy treasury systems to digital payments is transformative for the industry—“

Verituity, according to Don Dixon, co-founder and managing director of Forgepoint Capital, is “well positioned to take full advantage of the rapid transformation underway in disbursements” because it combines intelligent payments, trust, and verification.

Verituity and Mastercard partnered in April to allow commercial banks and payers to make payments almost instantly.

Mastercard’s suite of local and international money transfer options, Mastercard Move, is integrated into Verituity’s white-labeled payments platform as part of that partnership. The Verituity platform will be able to provide consumers with fast payee and transaction verification as well as a shorter time to market thanks to this connection.

In a press statement announcing the collaboration, Turner stated, “We’re excited to work with Mastercard to include more banks in the safe disbursement and remittance ecosystem.”