By Daniel Hartworth

Swift Key Neural:

the world’s first smartphone keyboard software that uses an artificial neural network to predict and correct language.

Swift Key Blog is here

Swift key are an software company, most notably known for their original, and highly successful, mobile keyboard ‘swift key’. The feature that stood them out at the time was the simple 3 word suggestion layout and the ability to customise the keyboard in various ways.

I have been using this app for nearly a week now and have around a 1000 key strokes saved. And, it has been a significant improvement on my old predictive text. However, according to the app data it has only predicted 38 words and completed 1,147; usage levels are not astronomical, it is key to focus on the number of predicted words as this is the area in which the app is innovating.

So how does it actually differ from other predictive text applications? Standard keyboards collect information on words you have already used in phrases or sentences, then use that information to predict what you will type within the same circumstances. Swift key neural, uses a computer model to predict what you will type next in similar circumstances; looking at patterns of language use in place of direct comparisons. Is this computer model using a connectionist idea’s, like found in translation software. One can only guess until more information is unveiled.

The bottom line is that although this is an impressive feat for an mobile keyboard company, it is not innovating further than software in other fields, such as translation. And, for end users this is really just going to be an incremental improvement in user experience and satisfaction. Hopefully though, this will inspire other software companies to think about language processing in new ways.

Notoriety in the tech world, some more in depth reviews.

My attention was first drawn swift key neural by NCIX daily, a popular and reputable you tube channel, here is the link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmmk7qB7My4

It seems they aren’t the only ones clocking onto this attention grabbing product, with other websites such as end gadget giving a full review:

http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/08/swiftkey-neural-alpha/