SwiftKey is one of the most popular third-party keyboard apps that are available for the Android platform.
With the introduction of new updated features, there is every chance that it might turn out to be the smartest keyboard app available, as it is now power-driven by neural networks which predict text and words better than before.
Neural Networks for Better Word Recommendations
Neural networks are a system of connections that have been inspired by the biological neural networks like that of the human mind. These networks come handily in situations where there are a large number of unknown variables. With the inclusion of the neural networks, SwiftKey keyboard app for Android devices will now take the whole sentence into account to understand the context more appropriately and will provide suggestions accordingly. Earlier, the SwiftKey app used to consider just the last few words of the sentence while suggesting the next possible word.
For example, when you write a sentence like “I will meet you at the” by using the earlier versions of the SwiftKey keyboard, the app would suggest words like “same”, “moment” etc., with a technique called “n-gram”. However, with the introduction of the new neural networks, the app will now make better auto-correction and suggestions of words like hotel, office, or airport as it will now have an improved understanding of the context and make a superior recommendation of words.
SwiftKey has also reported that the technique of neural networks will not just improve the word suggestions but will also upgrade the “autocorrect” feature that is offered by the app.
First Organization, But Not the First Attempt
On an interesting note, SwiftKey is the first firm to incorporate neural networks to its keyboard. However, this is not the first time that the company is working with neural networks for its keyboard, as it had earlier used the same technology for Neural Alpha, an app that was released in October last year on Google Play. Sometime back in October 2015, SwiftKey had released SwiftKey Neural, a standalone keyboard app, which completely changed the way of word predictions and auto-correction that was made by the popular keyboard app. Now, instead of a separate keyboard app, this neural network technology has been incorporated into the regular and beloved SwiftKey Keyboard app for Android-based devices.
SwiftKey had reported in an official blog that this new update will now be able to capture the similarity and relationship in between the words more meaningfully.
To get the support of the neural networks for the SwiftKey Keyboard app, the Android users can update the app directly from the Google Play Store. However, the company has not announced when it will introduce the feature to the iOS version of the keyboard app. The company will initially roll out the neural networks support to models that are applicable for the UK English and US English languages. However, the app will be out for other languages also in the upcoming months.