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Just as Danny Price was coming up with a brilliant idea, the industry had already been thrown into an uproar because of Argus Translate.
Swiftvox's headquarters.
CEO Brian White had installed the Argus Translate package early too, registering and logging in the very moment it opened.
Of everyone, the company most surprised by and most attentive to Prism AI's sudden announcement of entering the AI translation field was theirs.
Because AI translation was one of their company's core businesses, and their Swiftvox translation machine was, moreover, the overlord of the translation-machine field.
Their brand's translation machines, priced at over three thousand, broke three hundred thousand in annual sales, making them the undisputed sales champion of the category.
And their translation machines were also the designated translation product for certain intercontinental government-affairs forums, carrying official technical certification.
Domestically, anyone with a bit of know-how would think of their company the moment AI translation came up.
Had it been another company entering AI translation, they wouldn't have taken it this seriously.
Because they'd already come to dominate the AI translation field, and it wasn't just any company that could challenge them in it.
But Prism was different.
This company was too bizarre.
The AI field was very clearly subdivided, natural language processing, AI translation, computer vision, and so on.
The professional requirements within these fields were all extremely high, and very few companies could take it all on, setting foot in every field, and with good results at that.
The only companies capable of that were large conglomerates like Apex Commerce.
Prism clearly didn't yet count as a conglomerate of that scale, and yet they could achieve astonishing results in computer vision while achieving equally astonishing results in natural language processing.
In the still-in-testing Argus Image, aside from its image-processing ability, the natural language processing ability Argus displayed had stunned everyone in the industry.
Now, a company like this was coming over to do AI translation. How could that not make them nervous?
And according to the news, Prism Sciences had already been recruiting people to design translation machines.
This was plainly a sign that they meant to enter the translation-machine business.
That was one of their core businesses. How could they not be nervous?
Brian White tried out all of Argus Translate's main functions one by one, and quickly reached his own conclusion.
On the whole, this software was still crude, with obvious signs of rushed work, and the consideration given to some details wasn't quite sufficient yet.
But when it came to translation, it seemed to be just a touch better than their own system...
He made a call for Lucas Fenn, the head of the machine translation department.
The man was clearly following the Prism situation too.
The moment he came through the door, he asked, "Is it the Argus Translate matter you wanted to ask about, Mr. White?"
Brian White nodded. "How do you think Argus Translate's technological substance compares with our technology?"
Lucas Fenn hesitated. "We're still in the middle of detailed testing and comparison right now, and we're not too clear on exactly what technology the other side used. But going by the current results..."
"Their AI translation is indeed a bit better."
Hearing this news from the mouth of his own department head, though he'd had some mental preparation, Brian White still couldn't quite believe it.
"We've fallen behind this quickly?"
Lucas Fenn had no idea how to answer. As a technical straight-shooter, all he could do was state what was in his heart honestly.
Brian White sighed. Their company had begun cultivating the AI field back at the turn of the century, when most people could only go to an internet cafe just to lay eyes on a computer.
So many years of R&D was what had bought their leading position, and they'd won no small number of international awards. And now they'd fallen behind, just like that, in the most inexplicable way?
"Then how large is the gap between us and them?" Brian White asked, calming his mood.
Lucas Fenn thought about it. "Their lead over us isn't especially large either. If we put in a bit more effort, catching up shouldn't be a problem."
"Mm..." Brian White nodded, Lucas Fenn's words comforting him somewhat. "Then let's find our courage in the face of shame, and close the gap as fast as we can."
This scene wasn't playing out only inside Swiftvox.
Prism meaning to enter the translation-machine market, recruiting people, contacting manufacturers, a move this big couldn't be hidden from anyone.
Those in the AI translation industry, the translation-machine industry especially, had all gotten the news.
And now, seeing that Argus Translate's test version was already this fierce...
For a while, the big companies in the industry grew alarmed despite themselves.
No one wished to become Prism AI's next stepping stone.
It had to be understood that after Argus Image was released, a great swath of domestic and foreign AI image-processing software and websites that had originally been operating stably simply died off, and were rejected even when they went begging Prism to acquire them.
That final death pose was miserable in the extreme.
They had no wish to end up looking like that.
Prism's knife and fork were already bared. They had to launch a counterattack.
And out in the wider world, people had no way of knowing the situation these companies faced.
People's eyes were all on Ryan and Prism.
"Once I used Argus to perfectly translate every past year's advanced English proficiency exam paper, one by one, I knew the work of translation had most likely met its end."
"Forget just translation? Once Argus rolls out translation for other languages, the job of translating can disappear entirely from here on."
"Prism's incredible, The Mech Expert's incredible!"
"Before Prism, my understanding of artificial intelligence was artificial idiocy. It wasn't until Argus appeared that I realized the real idiot before was me."
"Prism AI is an outright industry bulldozer. Every product it releases wipes out a profession!"
"That one guru: slow to take effect, high consumption, a false jinx-lamp for the industry." "Prism AI: fast, low consumption, great effect, the true jinx-lamp for the industry."
While the public was marveling at Argus Translate, Danny Price's first homemade video finally went live too.
"Opening a video-site classic with Argus Translate, when AI meets the remix..."
In the video, a remix song played on one side while Argus on the other did its utmost to recognize the lyrics within it, straining to translate out the song's meaning.
The remix's absurdity and the AI's earnestness formed a sharp contrast in the video, right on cue.
This had the public in stitches at once.
And what shocked people most was that, under a remix song like this, Argus had actually translated out the entire song's meaning correctly, without a single point of error.
Only then did people discover that AI translation software could have a use like this.
For a while, having Argus recognize various remix songs became a craze online, and this recognition wasn't limited to English either, with Japanese, Russian, and other languages all taking their turn.
Videos like this formed a new kind of remix, dubbed the remix of remixes.
Heat like this had the rival companies eaten up with envy.
It was plainly just a translation software, with not even any marketing done, just a single post on their own public account, and yet the news got spread across the entire net, the software went live, and people even made remix videos to play with the meme.
Why didn't their software have this many people paying attention to it?
Ah.
Every time they thought of this, they had to console themselves that it was all because of that man, and there was no need to be envious.
And that man was currently busy with his own affairs, with no mood at all to bother about their thoughts.
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