Which of the following is a characteristic of natural language processing?

Natural language processing (NLP) is intrinsically designed to analyze and interpret human language in its natural form. This characteristic is vital because a majority of the data generated in today's digital world is unstructured, particularly in the form of text, such as emails, social media posts, and customer reviews. By enabling the analysis of unstructured text data, NLP allows organizations to extract meaningful information, derive insights, and make informed decisions based on the nuances of human language. This process involves various techniques, including text mining, sentiment analysis, and language translation, all of which contribute to deeper understanding and engagement with the data.

In contrast, the focus solely on structured data is a limitation and not a characteristic of NLP. Automating financial forecasting relates more closely to predictive analytics rather than NLP specifically, and categorizing users by retention rate pertains to customer segmentation strategies, which is outside the primary scope of natural language processing.