What is natural language processing (NLP)?

Natural language processing, or NLP, is the area of AI that helps computers understand and produce human language. It covers tasks such as sorting emails by topic, pulling names and amounts out of documents, detecting sentiment, translating and summarising. It is much older than today’s AI chatbots. Large language models are now the main way these tasks are done.

Why it matters for a business

Tasks that were once separate NLP projects, such as sorting emails by topic, pulling names and amounts out of contracts, detecting sentiment or translating, can now often be done by one general language model with a well-written prompt. For narrow, high-volume tasks on tidy inputs, an older specialised model can still be faster and cheaper to run. A vendor describing a product as “using NLP” may mean either.

Go deeper

AI vs. machine learning, and where LLMs fit

Related terms

• Large language model (LLM)
• Machine learning
• Deep learning
• Embeddings

All terms, A to Z