How Generative AI is Redefining Localization
Businesses seeking to increase profitability and expand their customer base should consider localization as a powerful marketing strategy to connect with diverse audiences worldwide
Localization is about adapting your business (products or services) to a specific market, ensuring it meets the cultural, linguistic, legal, and other aspects of the target market.
The rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) today has dramatically reshaping the marketing landscape by automating labor-intensive tasks. According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC) in 2024, GenAI will increase marketing productivity more than 40% by 2029. GenAI is a subset of an AI model that has the ability to process large volume of data, understand context, and generate new content, such as text, images, audio and videos that makes it an ideal tool for localization strategy.
Content Adaptation & Creation
Cultural sensitivity and local convention are crucial when creating content for new markets to avoid misunderstandings and offense. Cultural insensitivity can severely tarnish a brand’s reputation, making it difficult to regain trust. In 2019, Nike faced significant backlash for releasing a limited-edition sneaker featuring the Betsy Ross flag, a symbol often associated with American patriotism and the founding fathers. However, the flag’s history is also linked to slavery, as it was used by George Washington’s troops during the Revolutionary War, a time when slavery was prevalent in the United States.
GenAI models can be trained on large datasets of cultural information, allowing them to understand and incorporate cultural nuances and local formats into the generated content. By selecting the right GenAI model and providing specific prompts, you can guide GenAI to generate new images, videos, audios, and texts tailored to your needs.
- Image Editing: Identifying and Removing Sensitive Elements in Images
Some symbols or colors might be offensive in certain cultures. For instance, the cross symbols should be replaced with a more neutral or culturally appropriate symbol in a social media advertisement targeting the Muslims market.
Models: Text-to-Image
Excel for generating images based on text descriptions. It often combine transformers-based with other models to translate text into visual data. For instance, DALL-E by OpenAI that can create images from textual descriptions and edit existing images based on prompts.
- Video Creation: Adapting Videos for Diverse Markets
A Western food commercial might show a family dining at a table with chairs. To appeal to a Japanese market, the scene could be adjusted to feature a Japanese family sitting on the floor cushions with a traditional dining table.
Model: Text-to-Video
It generates videos based on textual descriptions that involves creating a sequence of images and coordinating motion, sound, and other elements. For instance, Synthesia can be used to create high-quality videos without cameras, microphones, or actors with different accents by using natural language prompts as input.
- Education and Training: Language Learning
Localized voiceovers can provide learners with authentic pronunciation and intonation, aiding language acquisition. It can make training materials more engaging for learners from different cultural backgrounds.
Model: Text-to-Audio
It helps to convert text and documents into conversational and natural sounding voices with text-to-speech (TTS) technology. For instance, Meta’s AudioCraft that generates high-quality, realistic audio and music from text-based user inputs after training on raw audio signals as opposed to MIDI or piano rolls.
- Document Conversion: Date, Time, Currency & Legal Aspects
While the US commonly uses the Month-Day-Year format, Asia typically uses the Day-Month-Year format. Documents like quotations or purchase orders can be converted for sales and order fulfillment. Additionally, translating legal documents, such as contracts, patents, and court transcripts, accurately and efficiently.
Model: Text-to-Text
Commonly used in processing and generating text, making them ideal for language-related tasks like copywriting, content optimization, and natural language understanding. For instance, ChatGPT not only allows you to have human-like conversations, it also helps you to ensure that localized content meets specific quality standards and guidelines.
Language Translation
Language translation refers to the process of converting text or speech from one language to another. According to CSA Research, a survey of 8,709 consumers in 29 countries revealed that 76% prefer to buy products with information in their native language. Airbnb is a prominent example. Airbnb has expanded globally by offering its platform in 62 languages while the average global high-tech company supports fewer than 30 languages. Today, Airbnb has more than 150 million worldwide users that have booked over 1.5 billion stays. GenAI can be used to streamline the translation process, saving time and money.
- Customer Support: Customer-facing AI Chatbot
Effective customer support is the cornerstone of a positive brand reputation. Business Insider report indicates that 48% of consumers are indifferent to whether they interact with a human agent or an AI chatbot, as long as their issue is resolved. The implementation of a generative AI chatbot has enabled H&M to respond to customers 70% faster.
Model: Text-to-Text
The Chatbot’s model processes the input text using natural language processing techniques and generates a text-based response that is intended to be relevant and informative. For instance, IBM’s Watson Assistant can provide 24/7 customer support by answering common questions in multiple languages in a human-like responses and assisting customers with tasks such as scheduling appointments and setting reminders.
- Employee Productivity: Employee-facing AI Tools
Research from Stanford and MIT revealed that equipping customer support agents with generative AI tools increased their efficiency by an average of 14%.
It could providing instant translation of customer queries that assists the human agents to response accurately by eliminating language barriers and ensuring they are accessing to the localized knowledge base.
Model: Text-to-Text
It’s designed to process and generate human language, making it a valuable tool for tasks like writing code, translating languages, and creating different kinds of creative content. For instance, Microsoft Co-pilot can provide real-time information, answer questions, and even draft responses to customer inquiries. This can help agents provide faster, more accurate, and more personalized support.
- Real-Time Translation: Captioning and Subtitling aid Language Barrier
Businesses can demonstrate their commitment to inclusivity and reach a wider audience by ensuring that their content is accessible to people with disabilities and communicate with customers who do not speak the same language. For example, India has 700 different languages and WHO estimated that there were approximately 63 million people with hearing loss.
Model: Audio-to-Text
It serves as an audio transcription tool which uses speech recognition to automatically convert audio to text instantly. For instance, record meetings from your phone or laptop and transcribe accurate meeting minutes with Google Gen AI in Google Workspace.
As GenAI continues to advance, its potential to revolutionize localization is undeniable. “Customers will expect AI-enhanced experiences with companies,” – Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School Professor.
According to Gartner, the market for generative AI solutions is expected to reach $51.8 billion by 2028, with a CAGR of 35.6%. This suggests substantial growth and investment in the field. Although GenAI offers significant benefits like improved accuracy, efficiency, and cultural sensitivity, businesses must also carefully consider the associated risks. These include the potential for bias in generated content and the need for human oversight to ensure quality and cultural sensitivity. By effectively managing these challenges, businesses can harness the power of GenAI to create more effective and engaging localized content, expanding their reach and driving growth in global markets.
About the Author
Kelferd Hor
Vice President of Investors Digital Experience
RHB Banking Group
Kelferd Hor is the Vice President of Investors Digital Experience at RHB Banking Group, where he is responsible for the development and delivery of Conversational Banking (Live Chat, Chatbot & AI) and Digital Wealth Management.
