SwiftKey app can make you write like Shakespeare!
09 Apr 2016
Two months after being bought out by Microsoft, smart keyboard app company SwiftKey has launched a new app designed to help you type like William Shakespeare.
ShakeSpeak for Android represents one of SwiftKey's many experimental apps - part fun and part a show of technology. Timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, ShakeSpeak certainly leans toward the quirky end of the product-launch spectrum - the keyboard sports a background image of the world-renowned playwright.
But the company has been putting its machine-learning smarts to good use, analysing the Bard of Avon's complete works – plays, sonnets, and poems - to ensure the language of the Elizabethans is front and centre when you're texting your buddies.
As with the normal SwiftKey app, ShakeSpeak learns as it goes along - so the predictive keyboard will intersperse your own linguistic preferences with the ''thou, thee, and thy'' parlance of the famous writer.
Did you know that five of Shakespeare's top 10 sentences end in exclamations? No? Well, they do, according to SwiftKey: ''Ha!,'' ''What!,'' ''How now!,'' ''Away!,'' and ''Hark!''
Founded in 2008, SwiftKey has emerged as one of the most prominent replacement keyboard apps for phones and tablets. It speeds up your typing by learning your style over time - even predicting the next word before you've started typing it. It does this partly based on historical patterns, but it also scans texts from other sources to ''learn'' common sequences in which words are normally placed.
But SwiftKey also provides the smarts for a number of third-party services apart from its core consumer keyboard app. Last year, it announced that it was working with paraplegic physicist Stephen Hawking to help him communicate twice as quickly. Indeed, SwiftKey had worked with Hawking for two years to develop technology specifically for him - the system learns from Hawking's own personal style and predicts the characters and words he plans to type based on historical patterns.
Back in October, SwiftKey launched a new experimental app that uses artificial neural networks (ANNs) to predict and correct language. ANNs represent part of the machine learning and artificial intelligence realm and are more closely aligned with the workings of the human brain, so they should, in theory, enable better predictions over time.
While ShakeSpeak is, on the surface, little more than an offshoot of SwiftKey's existing wares - turbocharged by Will Shakespeare, of course - it also serves to demonstrate what machine learning is capable of. You could substitute Shakespeare with any number of more ''useful'' texts and tailor a keyboard for just about any use-case. And this is partly why Microsoft has seemingly been obsessed with mobile keyboard apps - they serve as the interface between humans and computers.
'World's greatest wordsmith'
Commenting on the development of the app, SwiftKey's head of partnerships Sarah Rowley said, ''We are delighted to be combining the Bard's works with our smartphone keyboard technology for the first time.
''SwiftKey learns from your writing style, so who better to have as your guide than one of the world's greatest wordsmiths? Shakespeare brought language to the masses in innovative and exciting ways - and now people can experience his unique and timeless use of language on their smartphone keyboard,'' Rowley said.
The launch of the ShakeSpeak app is part of the 'Fans of London' tourism campaign from VisitLondon.com, which is supported by the Great Britain Campaign, British Airways and Hilton.
'Fans of London' celebrates the blockbuster events taking place across the capital this year, including the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's legacy, and the first ever exhibition on the Rolling Stones, Exhibitionism.VisitLondon.com has identified some of the most genuine and deserving fans of the Royal Family and Harry Potter as part of the campaign.
Shakespeare is believed to have died on his birthday, 23 April, in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616.
