Google’s Artificial Intelligence is being taught by romance fiction

You know who writes romance fiction? Women do. Women are teaching the Google AI how to talk better.

It seems that humans will never tire of asking questions, learning things and having a chat. Could the Google app be better at giving good chat? That’s what Google was wondering recently. Could it become more conversational?

Google are currently working to loosen up the AI’s language by feeding it thousands of romance novels.

Andrew Dai, the Google engineer in charge of the project, told The Verge:

“It would be much more satisfying to ask Google questions if it really understood the nuances of what you were asking for, and could reply in a more natural and familiar way. It’s like how you’d rather ask a friend about what to do in a vacation spot instead of calling their visitor center…”

AI systems learn and evolve through input, or what’s fed into them. The idea of an AI learning nuance is exciting. So is the idea of an AI engine learning nuance from romance fiction, a genre written predominantly by women.

Senior Google communications manager Jason Freidenfelds went on to tell The Verge that romance novels were more suitable than children’s books, because they both had similar plots and themes, but romance novels used a wide range of vocabulary to express those ideas.

The key goal of this Google project is to enable the AI system to communicate with users in a more conversational way.

Essentially, women who are teaching Google to talk. But which romance fiction has been fed into it? Let’s hope it’s churning its way through Jane Austen, Jan Gurley, Minae Mizumura and Sarah Waters…