In the context of artificial intelligence (AI), annotation refers to the process where data is manually labeled or marked by humans to prepare it for machine learning. The labeled data provides the AI with context information that helps it recognize and learn patterns.
Annotations can be applied to different types of data:
- Text Annotation: Here, text is marked with relevant information, such as whether a word is a noun or a verb, or what part of a sentence a particular word or phrase represents.
- Image Annotation: In this case, parts of an image are marked to identify them. For example, in an image of a car, the car itself, the wheels, the windows, etc., could be marked.
- Video Annotation: Here, sequences in a video are marked to identify actions, individuals, or objects.
- Audio Annotation: In this case, parts of an audio signal are marked to identify certain features such as speech, music, background noise, etc.
The created annotations are then used in machine learning algorithms to train the AI so that it can automatically recognize similar patterns in new, unlabeled data.