Google Gboard for Android now supports over 500 languages, two years since launched

Googles Gboard virtual keyboard now comes with 500 language support on Android in just two years after it was launched. By this Google says that more than 90 per cent of the world can now type in their respective language with Gboard.

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Google had launched Gboard in December 2016 that back then came with the support of 100 languages. Right now, Gboard comes with the support of more than 40 writing systems ranging from alphabets used across many languages, like Roman and Cyrillic, to scripts that are used for mere one language, like Ol Chiki. The layouts of the keyboard are customized for each language varieties that aids in more natural communication, along with the autocorrect and predictive text features.

Moreso, every time a new language is added to Gboard, it creates a new machine learning language model that assists Gboard to know when and how to autocorrect the typing or predicting the next word. Reaching this milestone in a short duration of time is an achievement for Google because adding a new language needs to have enough writing text in order to train the AI. For English things are easy but when it comes to other languages, the process becomes much harder.

In situations when it can't find data online, the company shares a list of writing prompts with native speakers so that it creates new text corpora. It will then go on and analyze text corpora to figure out which characters to include and also determine the frequency of often it has been used.