Meet A Founder Putting Humans At The Center Of His AI Startup

The biggest differentiator between Frederik Pedersen’s AI-driven startup, EasyTranslate, and its competitors is the critical role humans play in localizing content. Using generative AI, EasyTranslate enables e-commerce and software companies to translate and localize web content for different markets. Uniquely, humans are at the heart of EasyTranslate’s business model with a marketplace of freelancers to edit and refine generated content, something Pedersen says no other competitor offers.

“We enable businesses to create content in any language by combining the best of artificial intelligence and human intelligence,” Pedersen says.

Pedersen says the problem with relying exclusively on AI results for translation and content creation is both conversational and colloquial. “It’s been an ongoing problem. Relying on AI-only for translation produces a result that just doesn’t sound right. It’s not good enough for the audience it’s intended for. Everyone has tried to solve this problem.”

That’s why customers of the Copenhagen-based business are encouraged to utilize EasyTranslate’s freelance marketplace, which it doesn’t generate revenue from, to hire verified translators and copy editors to localize content and ensure it’s consistent with a brand’s identity and voice.

This two-step approach, Pedersen says, saves clients money because AI, which is cheaper than human capital, does the heavy lifting with the bulk of copy and translations first, before a translator and/or copy editor is brought in for specific parts of the process to make it shine. In the process, copy editors are also helping to refine machine learning. Yet, Pedersen says it’s not a cannibalistic process.

“The amount of content online is increasing rapidly. If you want engaging content, you won’t be able to do that with generative AI. There will be content purely generated by AI for other purposes: knowledge-based articles, summaries and reports; but user expectations for quality content is increasing and I see generative AI as a powerful tool for copy editors,” Pedersen says. “AI will become more powerful and better at generating content with the company’s tone of voice, but it will also put more pressure on creating premium content, which is generated by humans.”

EasyTranslate’s customers include Dyson, Wix.com, and Acer, among many other big brands. Pedersen cites a specific example of a Norway-based electronics e-commerce site selling product to consumers in different countries. “There’s a big difference if you’re selling a product in Denmark versus France. After we automated the process of using AI and machine translation for their French content and the site went live, the client discovered a low conversion rate. They then employed translators to translate the reviews of all products from Danish to French, and it increased their conversion rate quite dramatically.”

After bootstrapping for 10 years, EasyTranslate recently raised €2.75M in funding to add new functionalities to its marketplace.