GMIC Beijing 2017: 2D images coming to life, smart dictionaries

World
Europe

By CGTN's Grace Shao

The Global Mobile Internet Conference (GMIC) exhibition offers a variety of products from talking robots to VR headsets. From education and communication, to entertainment and relaxation, seemingly unbounded by limits, technology is constantly changing the way we live our lives.

Artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) - these are the concepts which are really getting the juices flowing at this year's GMIC in Beijing.

An AI robot from Urobot dances at GMIC 2017 in Beijing. /CFP Photo

Duan Yitao, chief scientist at Youdao, a popular online dictionary and translation brand, says his company's AI translator is leading innovation in its sector: "Behind this translator is our latest neural machine translation model. It uses the latest data learning technology. It mimics the mechanisms in our human brain."

Through AI, the app connects to a neural network to translate academic papers, newspapers and even conversations in a much smarter way than legacy dictionaries.‍

It also has a special feature that globetrotters will just cherish - not only will it translate a picture of a word or phrase, but it will render a full news article.

The screenshot of Youdao App when it is used to translate financial text. /CGTN Photo

Duan says that with improvements over the last two years using deep learning technology, neural machine translation is the same as the accumulative results obtained in the past 10 years with statistical translation.

A booth at GMIC 2017 in Beijing. /CGTN Photo

"I usually make light painting with a camera, but this time, Nubia smartphone has a built-in function so you can paint! So it's very simple, good for people who are interested in studying light painting," says Roy Wang from Nubia smartphone.

What a world we live in today! 2D images coming to life, and painting that no longer requires paint! Where will technology take us from here? Well, only time will tell.

11km