Miðeind develops Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence technology for the Icelandic language.

Miðeind

Miðeind is a privately owned software company based in Reykjavík, Iceland, specializing in Language Technology (LT), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications for the Icelandic language.

The company's mission is to enable Icelandic businesses and the public to benefit from the rapid global progress now happening in the fields of Language Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

In addition to "traditional" LT tools, Miðeind is implementing AI-based services for Icelandic, such as text summarization and question answering.

Most software developed by Miðeind is open source and freely available on GitHub under GNU GPLv3 or MIT licenses. Use of the software under a different license is negotiable.

The name Miðeind is the Icelandic word for meson, a category of the fundamental particles of nature.

Miðeind can be contacted at the following email address: mideind@mideind.is

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Products & Technology

The company’s most visible NLP product to date is Embla, a voice-based assistant app for smartphones that answers a wide range of questions in natural language. Embla has been nominated for awards such as UT-sprotinn 2019 at UTmessan and a place on The P&P Startup List 2020. Embla is built on Greynir, Miðeind’s core technology stack. Greynir includes a tokenizer and a fast deep constituency parser, guided by a wide-coverage context-free grammar for Icelandic.

Miðeind has developed Yfirlestur, a spelling and grammar checker for Icelandic text that uses the deep parser, among other methods, to provide much more detailed linguistic advice than has been possible to date.

Miðeind has also developed Vélþýðing, machine translation to and from Icelandic based on state-of-the-art deep neural network technology.

In addition to this, Miðeind has developed a very popular web-based version of a popular crossword game for Icelandic with its good share of hardcore followers.

In order to accomplish all this, Miðeind uses the most powerful supercomputer used for language technology in Iceland. It is built on HPE servers and powered by the latest generation of nVidia Graphic Processor Units, nVidia A100.

Our Team

Miðeind employs several experts in various NLP-related fields. Its founder and owner, Vilhjálmur Þorsteinsson, is a veteran software designer and entrepreneur in the IT industry.

The team members have experience in fields such as computational linguistics/language technology, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, translation studies, philosophy, religion studies, music, and history.

Collaboration & Academic Contribution

Miðeind is a member of SÍM, a consortium of Icelandic universities, institutions and companies charged with implementing a 5-year NLP plan for the Icelandic language, supported by government funding. The project is expected to end in 2023.

Miðeind has also collaborated with many companies and institutions outside of SÍM, such as OpenAI (see more here), Íslandsbanki, Reykjavík City, Digital Iceland, the media company Kjarninn, and the translation centre under the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation.

The company has received several research and development grants in the area of language technology resources and tools.

Miðeind is dedicated to building and disseminating LT/NLP knowledge for Icelandic. With that in mind, Miðeind has participated in giving talks and teaching courses, writing articles and posters and so on. Miðeind has also employed students for summer postings.

In addition to direct collaboration, our work has been referenced and adapted in various articles and tools.