It’s no secret that OpenAI is working on ChatGPT Translate. The “potential” has been live for a while, although now, OpenAI is ready to talk about it. In a statement shared with the media, OpenAI has formally announced ChatGPT Translate, a dedicated translation tool or service that lets you translate text into other languages. You can think of it as OpenAI’s answer to Google Translate.

ChatGPT already allows you to translate text. But this new tool provides a dedicated space for users who are just looking for plain and simple translations. No more and no less. According to OpenAI, “ChatGPT has always been great at languages ​​and can translate into 40+ languages ​​with accuracy, tone, and cultural nuances. ChatGPT translation highlights this capability, which we are working to make even better.” In other words, the idea is to make it clear to the end user that ChatGPT can also translate. Google is not alone. Despite the fact that OpenAI is working to improve it even more, ChatGPT translation is here to stay and will likely become even more useful in the future.

There’s also scope for more localization, especially for its Indian user base, meaning OpenAI could soon support even more languages. Currently, it supports 47. For reference, Google supports 249. “We recently designed a new benchmark – IndQA – that helps us evaluate how AI systems perform across different languages ​​and cultures in India. This is just one way we’re working to make our technology more accessible and useful to people around the world,” OpenAI said.

Localization will be important as OpenAI seeks to go beyond direct translation as is also evident from the current form of ChatGPT translation. The tool – which is available via browser on phones and desktops – lets you add AI twists to translated text, for example, you can make it sound a certain way. OpenAI has added “flow” elements to improve the way output works. Pre-built prompts let you activate ChatGPT’s AI skills to make translation more fluent – ​​as well as make it formal or simple so even kids can understand. It’s this AI twist that makes ChatGPT Translate different from Google Translate in some ways. Google has the advantage of scale and moving quickly, but with OpenAI getting into the ring, things are going to get even more interesting in the coming days.