LTI computer model aims to turn film scripts into animations
by Byron Spice | Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a computer model that can translate text describing physical movements directly into simple computer-generated animations, a first step toward someday generating movies directly from scripts.

Scientists have made tremendous leaps in getting computers to understand natural language, as well as in generating a series of physical poses to create realistic animations. These capabilities might as well exist in separate worlds, however, because the link between natural language and physical poses has... Read More

LTI Team Helps Computers Concoct Interesting Endings
by Byron Spice | Thursday, August 1, 2019

Nothing disappoints quite like a good story with a lousy finish. So researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who work in the young field of automated storytelling don't think they're getting ahead of themselves by devising better endings.

The problem is that most algorithms for... Read More

The CMU Language Technologies Institute is Hiring Faculty
Thursday, August 1, 2019

We're currently seeking applicants for both tenure-track and teaching-track faculty positions. Please see the links below for more information on available positions, as well as instructions for applying:

Tenure Track Position

Teaching Track Position

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by Bryan Burtner | Friday, April 12, 2019

Language Technologies Institute Assistant Professor Yulia Tsvetkov is a 2019 recipient of the Okawa Foundation Research Grant. The Research Grant, awarded annually since 2010 to researchers in the fields of information and telecommunications, is one of the most prestigious in computer science. Tsvetkov is one of eight recipients from US-based institutions.

The awarding organization, the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications, was established in 1986 under the mission "to promote and seek the development in the field of ICT through such means as awards and research... Read More

CMU Researchers Help Interpreters Find “Le Mot Juste”
by Scott Fybush | Friday, February 15, 2019

Think about all the challenges that go into interpretation:  a human sitting in a booth, listening to live speech in one language and somehow smoothly repeating it in another language, sometimes for hours at a time. Then imagine our interpreter is working at a specialized conference where the speaker is using arcane terminology, forcing them to come up with rarely used words and phrases at a moment’s notice.

Add a computer into the mix, and our interpreter’s job gets easier, right? Not so fast, said Graham Neubig, an assistant professor in the Language Technologies Institute... Read More

New resource can be used to build text-to-speech systems for hundreds of languages
by Byron Spice | Monday, December 10, 2018

It’s the Christmas season, which means that beloved Bible verses are being read and recited innumerable times — and in a vast number of languages. The Bible’s global reach as evidenced this time of year has enabled a Carnegie Mellon University professor to create a language resource that could enhance communication in hundreds of languages.

By tapping online text and audio recordings of the New Testament in more than 700 languages, Alan Black, a professor in CMU’s Language Technologies Institute, has created a dataset that can be used to build text-to-speech computer systems and... Read More

LTI Professor Eric Nyberg central in establishing new partnership
by Byron Spice | Monday, August 20, 2018

Students and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science are collaborating with the digital media intelligence firm Meltwater to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence education and research using the company's AI... Read More

by Bryan Burtner | Thursday, May 31, 2018

LTI faculty and students are featured heavily at the 2018 conference of the North American chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL HLT 2018). The conference includes 15 papers with at least one LTI author, with 23 members of the LTI community represented in total. Additionally, two LTI faculty members – assistant professors Graham Neubig and Yulia Tsvetkov – will be leading tutorials at the conference.

NAACL HLT, now in its 16th year, is one of the world’s premier conferences in the fields of computation linguistics and... Read More

The dataset includes over 170,000 unique dialogs
by Bryan Burtner | Tuesday, May 8, 2018

In March, 2005, a team of LTI researchers launched a spoken dialog system aimed at providing after-hours information to users of the Allegheny County public transit system. 13 years later, the system has handled over 200,000 calls, producing data that’s been used in over 22 doctoral theses and more than 250 publications outside the CMU community. And now, that data is publicly available to researchers everywhere in hopes of continuing to advance the state of the art in this ever-evolving field.

The NSF-funded “Let’s Go!” project, brainchild of LTI faculty members Maxine Eskenazi and... Read More

by Byron Spice | Monday, February 26, 2018

Language Technologies Institute Assistant Professor Louis-Philippe Morency received a three-year Finmeccanica Career Development Professorship in Computer Science during a Feb. 19 ceremony.

... Read More

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