Two smaller capabilities sit alongside document reading: working out what language a piece of text is in, and working out what is in a photograph.
Detecting the language of some text
Given a piece of text, ActiveManage can identify which language it is most likely written in, with a confidence score and the alternatives considered. Useful for routing correspondence to somebody who speaks the language, deciding which language to reply in, or tagging free-text records.
Use the confidence score. Short text is genuinely ambiguous — a three-word message may plausibly be several languages — and acting on a low-confidence result produces exactly the sort of error customers notice, such as a reply in the wrong language. Set a threshold and fall back to a default below it.
Only a limited amount of text can be analysed at once; longer text is trimmed automatically, so send a representative sample rather than an entire document.
Analysing images
Given an uploaded image, ActiveManage can detect what is in it — useful for tagging photographs so they can be searched, reading text out of a photograph such as a sign or a serial plate, or screening user-uploaded images before they are published.
Points to consider before switching image analysis on
- Images are sent to a third-party service. Where customers upload photographs, your privacy notice needs to say so.
- Anything face-related carries additional legal obligations in most jurisdictions, including the UK and EU. Take advice before using it, rather than after.
- Confidence scores matter here too. Act on high-confidence results and route the rest to a person.
- Cost scales with volume. Analysing every uploaded image is very different from analysing the ones somebody asks about.
Worked Examples
- Field service: read a serial number from an engineer's photograph instead of typing it.
- Marketplace moderation: screen listing photographs before publication, with anything uncertain queued for review.
- Multilingual support: route inbound e-mail to the right language team automatically.