Natural Language Generation
What is NLG
Natural Language Generation (NLG) is a technology that converts data into plain-English text (“natural language”). Like Artificial Intelligence, this is a broad category of algorithms and approaches that can be tailored to specific applications. The result of all NLG processes is a human-readable narrative (prose). You may not realize it , but many news articles and blog posts today are generated by NLG, particularly financial news and sports results.
Relationship to NLP
You may be familiar with Natural Language Processing (NLP), which analyzes text and extracts data. In many ways, NLG is the inverse, analyzing data and extracting text. Both are very new fields in computer science, though NLP is slightly more established as a means to ingest data into platforms.
NLG IS USED ACROSS INDUSTRIES
Natural Language Generation is used to produce narratives in a wide variety of industries, many you might already be consuming. Some examples include generating written:
Business intelligence narratives based on company KPIs and dashboards, such as Narrative Science Quill
Weather forecasts, such as the Scotland Pollen Forecast system (Turner 2006)
Individual financial portfolio updates emailed to clients
Ecommerce product descriptions and landing page content
Personalized in-app customer messages
Financial news articles, such as earnings announcements
Sports scores and results
Constituent correspondence, such as PoliScribe
“A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but concise descriptions and annotations can help people understand and better interpret data. Natural language generation (NLG) technology interprets data and offers background context or analysis through textual descriptions.”