what is the field of natural language processing

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on giving computers the ability to understand and respond to human language in much the same way humans can. NLP combines computational linguistics, rule-based modeling of human language, and statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models to process human language in the form of text or voice data and to ‘understand’ its full meaning, complete with the speaker or writer’s intent and sentiment. Some of the most common techniques used in NLP include sentiment analysis, text classification, part-of-speech tagging, and named entity recognition. NLP has a variety of real-world applications in a number of fields, including medical research, search engines, business intelligence, and customer service. Some examples of NLP-powered products and services include voice-activated digital assistants, email-scanning programs, translation apps, and chatbots.