Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field within artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on enabling machines to understand, process, and generate human language whether it's written or spoken. The goal of NLP is to bridge the gap between how humans communicate and how computers interpret that communication.

NLP combines linguistics, computer science, and machine learning to analyze language structure (grammar, syntax), meaning (semantics), and context. This allows machines to perform tasks like:

Text classification (e.g., spam detection, sentiment analysis)
Language translation (e.g., Google Translate)
Speech recognition (e.g., voice assistants like Siri or Alexa)
Chatbots and virtual assistants
Summarizing documents or extracting key information
Auto-correct and predictive text

Modern NLP techniques use machine learning models—especially deep learning and large language models (like GPT) to better understand nuances, slang, tone, and even emotion in text or speech.

NLP is widely used in industries such as healthcare, finance, customer service, marketing, and education to improve communication, automate tasks, and gain insights from large volumes of unstructured text data.