What is the term for the use of AI to automatically translate text or speech from one language to another?

The term that specifically refers to the use of AI to automatically translate text or speech from one language to another is "Machine Translation." This process utilizes algorithms and linguistic resources to convert content from a source language to a target language, enabling effective communication across language barriers.

Machine Translation has significantly advanced with the development of deep learning techniques that allow for more context-aware and grammatically accurate translations than earlier rule-based systems. It leverages models trained on vast datasets of bilingual text to learn patterns and nuances of both languages involved. This ability makes it a crucial component of AI applications in global communication, online content localization, and real-time communication tools.

In contrast, Natural Language Processing encompasses a broader range of techniques that involve understanding and manipulating human language in text and speech forms, which includes but is not limited to translation. Speech Recognition involves identifying and converting spoken language into text, while a Language Model predicts the probability of sequences of words, which does not directly translate languages. Each of these is relevant to AI but serves a distinct purpose from that of machine translation.