Roblox Unveils Real-Time AI Chat Translator

Gaming platform Roblox has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that can translate text chats in real time. This AI model, which supports 16 languages, allows players to interact with each other seamlessly, eliminating language barriers.

Breaking Down Language Barriers

The AI chat translator was designed to enhance user engagement by enabling them to communicate with other players in their own language. The translation happens so quickly that users might not even realise it’s happening. However, if they wish to, they can view the original message by clicking an icon. Roblox’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Dan Sturman, stated that the initiative aimed to make users feel more comfortable interacting with each other.

A Unique Approach to Translation

Roblox started by creating a transformer-based large language model (LLM), which was trained using publicly available data and internal resources. The LLM was incorporated into a mixture of experts (MoE) architecture, an environment that ran multiple translation apps, each specializing in a different language. This efficient approach allowed Roblox to save resources by avoiding the need to build a separate LLM for each language.

Ensuring Trust and Safety

The implementation of the chat translation AI doesn’t affect the existing privacy and safety process. According to Sturman, Roblox continues monitoring chats for trust and safety reasons and can get feedback if translations are not accurate. The system maintains its commitment to blocking banned words.

Beyond Text Chats

Roblox, which has been working on appealing to older audiences, has been using generative AI models to enhance the user experience. It introduced an AI chatbot assistant for developers last year and has also started automatically translating image assets, like words on buildings, to the user’s default language. The hope is that the translator model will eventually extend beyond text chats. Potential future applications could include translating non-compliant words to compliant ones or even translating real-time voice chats.

Other Players in the Field

Roblox isn’t the only company investing in AI translation models. Meta and Google have also developed their own versions. Meta’s SeamlessM4T handles nearly 100 languages, and Google’s Universal Speech Model, which also supports around 100 languages, is currently used on YouTube to translate captions.