Microsoft Translator: New tech can handle group chats in real time

Microsoft hopes to release a mobile app before the end of year to translate multi-lingual conversations involving groups of speakers in real time. Microsoft's new speech-recognition record means professional transcribers could be among the first to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence. Whereas the Microsoft Translator mobile apps that are available today can translate conversations involving two speakers, Microsoft says by the end of the year the new app will support multiple speakers using nine languages. The firm demoed a prototype of a mobile app powered by Microsoft Translator that showed three people engaged in a conversation, each speaking a different language, French, English and German. Each speaker had a phone app, which displayed written text, showing the real-time translation of the other person's speech, as shown below.