SwiftKey recently rolled out a new app that the Microsoft-owned company says will enable you to write just like William Shakespeare.
ShakeSpeak is one Android app that is part of a suite of experimental apps that mix technology show-off with clean, linguistic fun. The release of the software was scheduled to coincide with 400 years since the Bard's death and one way in which the coders commemorate the great writer is by having his iconic face as the app's background image.
There's a more serious note to the app, however. The developers make use of machine-learning to analyze Shakespeare's complete works - both lyrical and dramatic, so that all messages sent via ShakeSpeak end well.
One positive aspect of the SwiftKey app is that it learns from its users as they type, so that their idiom preferences will still surface alongside the predictable "thou" and "thy" borrowed from the cultural titan.
Just a trivia, you should know that half of Great Will's top 10 sentences end in exclamations. For your reading pleasure, SwiftKey has them all embedded in its vocabulary. Use "What!", "Hark!", "How now!", "Ha!" and "Away!" as emoticon-variants, just make sure your receiver majored in English.
Since it launched in 2008, SwiftKey established itself as one of the go-to replacement keyboard apps for mobile devices. Its learning abilities allow it to predict the next words that the users are about to type, thus speeding up the texting. This is enabled via using historical patterns, but the software scans texts from different sources to familiarize itself with the most common sequences in which words are usually placed.
However, SwiftKey's area of interest goes way beyond simple texting gimmicks. In 2015, the company said that it is cooperating with Stephen Hawking to assist him in doubling the speed at which he communicates. Two years' worth of effort sits behind the partnership of SwiftKey and Hawking, as the company crafted technology tailored to the physicist's needs. By using the historical patterns, the system emulates Hawking's style and is able to predict what characters and words he plans to use.
In October 2015, SwiftKey pushed out another experimental app, which tapped into the potential of artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting and correcting language. An important part of the machine learning and artificial intelligence realm, ANNs mimic rather closely how the human brain works. This means that using ANNs in language simulation should yield better results than any other method.
In December 2015, the company unveiled SwiftKey Symbols, a free app that assists people with talking and learning difficulties to communicate via image based messages.
While ShakeSpeak appears to be little more than SwiftKey branching out to meet the needs of texting hipsters, the app goes to show the capabilities of machine learning.
It is easy to imagine substituting Shakespeare for a variety of sources, thus obtaining a keyboard fitted for any number of professional uses. This appears to be one of the reasons why Microsoft is interested in mobile keyboard apps - the fact that they act as great interfaces between machines and humans.
You may download ShakeSpeak for Android on the Google Play store.
