From this summer, top-of-the-range mobile phones will include a new advanced predictive text system. Not only does the system attempt to determine what you are typing and automatically complete words, it also thinks ahead to predict the rest of the sentence.
Yesterday we put the system through its paces; just how predictive would it prove to be?
For our test we hit the key sequence 46837. The system first worked out the most likely letter combination, in this case GOVER. It then predicted the rest of the word, in this case GOVERNMENT. Finally the artificial intelligence kicked in to predict what will come next, in this case GOVERNMENT TO LOSE VOTE.
We tried a few more.
2435
became CHEL
which the system completed as
CHELSEA WILL LOSE TO BARCELONA IN THE SECOND LEG
5646
-JOHN
-JOHN HIGGINS TO WIN SNOOKER WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
9463
-WIND
-WINDOWS 7 WILL ONLY SUPPORT 3 APPS ON NETBOOKS
Whatever that means. Quite impressive, but in the prediction about John Higgins it should really have said 'World Snooker Championship' rather than 'Snooker World Championship'. However, the system is still very new and manufacturers say they expect it to become better by the release date.
Whether in fact these predictions turn out to be true we have yet to see, but the potential is enormous. It could be just the boost that the makers of this new technology need. As the phone put it when we entered 1#7:
-I P
-I PREDICT A RIOT - OF PEOPLE WANTING ADVANCED PREDICTIVE TEXT
