Quality estimation › FAQ › Is quality estimation for end buyers, or for agencies?
End buyers.
The value created by the systems that include quality estimation should go and is going primarily to end buyers.
Quality estimation failed as a copycat AI feature tacked on to manual human translation services, because they have direct conflict of interest, given their existing business model.
It would be like taxi companies inventing self-driving cars. They typically lack both the motivation, and the AI research and engineering DNA, to crack this hard problem.
In fact, even companies that started out as AI companies stopped disrupting and started pushing lock-in when they started selling yet another manual human translation service.
(Typically under the influence or pressure of their venture capital or private equity investors pushing “vertical integration” without deeply understanding the vertical.)
This echoes the adoption pattern of the most significant earlier translation automation technology, the translation memory.
In the long run, agencies benefit, because increasing efficiency increases consumption (Jevons paradox), albeit indirectly and in aggregate.
← Learn more about quality estimation
© 2026 qualityestimation.org
Supported by the team at ModelFront — AI to check and fix AI translations, and trigger human intervention where needed