Roblox builds real-time AI translation tool for metaverse platform

Gaming platform Roblox is developing a multilingual translation model to support real chat conversations on the metaverse platform using artificial intelligence (AI).

The company shared in a blog post that it achieved the feature by deploying a large language model (LLM) with advanced functionalities to support 16 languages on Roblox. The AI-based translation feature allows Roblox’s 70 million daily users to communicate with each other in real time without lag.

Roblox’s LLM reached the milestone thanks to its processing speed with latency at under 100 milliseconds. Apart from speed, the AI feature boasts impressive accuracy, supporting colloquial language, abbreviations, and “Roblox-specific language.”

Rather than building out a separate LLM for each language pair, Roblox’s offering houses all the language pairs in a single interface, offering several benefits. The unified, transformer-based translation offers time and cost-saving benefits in addition to maintaining translation accuracy.

“This architecture allows for better utilization of resources, since each expert has a different specialty, which leads to more efficient training and inference — without sacrificing translation quality,” said Daniel Sturman, Chief Technology Officer at Roblox.

A closer look at Roblox’s model shows that the unified system can lean on the similarities between multiple languages to improve accuracy. Early studies show that the model has demonstrated proficiency in detecting input with a combination of languages and can provide a fairly understandable translation.

Training the translation model was not a walk in the park for Roblox, with the technical team employing a range of training data. Starting with open-source data, the team also incorporated chat translation results and in-house data while relying on back translation to handle complex translation pairs.

The Web3-based gaming company announced that the LLM will automatically block phrases violating its policies to ensure a safe gaming experience for users.

“Safety and civility is at the forefront of everything we do at Roblox, so this was a very important piece of the puzzle,” said Sturman.

Developments ahead for Roblox

Roblox’s CTO disclosed that the company will make steady improvements to its AI-based translation feature by collecting user feedback on the platform. The technical team revealed planned regular updates to keep up with new slang while mulling over the prospect of supporting new languages.

In the future, Roblox says it will begin translating in-game text on images and 3D models for users in addition to translating voice chat. Sturman disclosed that the voice chat translation feature will capture the “rhythm and emotion” of players’ voices in real time for a wholesome gaming experience.

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