by Angela Guess
Chris Miller reports in Gizmodo, “Swiftkey is the most innovative and interesting predictive keyboard maker in the business, and Microsoft is a software giant that’s trying to push its artificial intelligence cred a little higher. According to a report in the Financial Times, it’s a match made in heaven, to the tune of $250 million. Swiftkey is best known for its iOS and Android keyboards, which use artificial intelligence (and even a neural network!) to generate predictions that actually work. Users (by which I mean me) also love the user interface, which can pull from your Gmail account to learn your writing style, and allows for the tweakiest of changes to the keyboard layout.”
Miller continues, “It’s a purchase that [makes] total sense for Microsoft—Swiftkey’s natural-language AI is a perfect fit with Cortana, and Microsoft also has this slightly bizarre habit of making free, useful utility apps for iOS and Android. The price is also in line with previous purchases of AI startups, although low for such a popular smartphone app.”
photo credit: SwiftKey