Roblox introduced on Monday an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time chat translator that enables users who speak different languages to easily communicate with each other regardless of language differences in 3D experiences.
TakeAway Points:
- Roblox has introduced an AI-powered real-time chat translator.
- The translator is able to translate up to 16 different languages accurately and fluently.
- Daniel Sturman, Chief Technology Officer at Roblox, said there is plan to continue to update the model with the latest translations, chat phrases, and slang phrases.
Roblox Chat Translator
The automatic chat translations enable up to 16 languages direct translation, including English that Roblox supports. However, Daniel Sturman, Chief Technology Officer at Roblox, said “We plan to continue to update our models with the latest translation examples from within our experiences, as well as popular chat phrases and the latest slang phrases in every language we support.”
The foundational model behind the feature emphasizes accuracy and fluency, as well as the context of the rest of the sentence, to find the best translation.
“Our custom large language model is so fast we’re able to do real-time translations from any one of 16 languages to any of the others as people type to help them connect in real time, no matter where they’re from,”
Sturman said.
“We started using AI to translate in-experience content at scale, so our community developers can engage more users globally. Now, thanks to our new real-time AI chat translations, we’ve made something possible on Roblox that isn’t even possible in the physical world—enabling people to overcome language barriers and seamlessly communicate with one another in immersive 3D experiences. In the future, we envision every part of a user experience on Roblox to be fully translated into their native language, including AI-powered voice translation.”
The Goal of the Translator
According to Sturma, the model had two goals; to create a system capable of translating between any combination of 16 languages and offer fast support to real chat conversations, “which to us meant getting latency down to approximately 100 milliseconds.”
The language feature can be activated on its own in the chat boxes. The AI automatically translates multiple users’ different languages in real time to the user’s own language .
“As we continue to grow our user base globally, we seek to make Roblox not only easily accessible, but also truly localized, offering everything from local payment options to culturally relevant content and avatars, and, of course, in-experience content and chat translation,”
said Zhen Fang, Head of International at Roblox.
“Our early experiments with this new automated chat translation technology showed a very positive impact on time spent, chat engagement, and session quality, so we are very excited to roll it out to further enhance and expand our community’s daily communication. The world feels a little bit smaller when we enable features like these at global scale,” he concluded.
Commenting on the announcement on X, some Roblox fans on Twitter said that the update in the chat tool has really helped them to connect and make friends with users globally without facing any language barrier, while others asked for new updates that will solve their other challenges on the platform.
