Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of artificial intelligence that focuses on the interaction between computers and humans through natural language. It enables machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language in a valuable way, facilitating tasks such as translation, sentiment analysis, and chatbots. NLP combines linguistics, computer science, and machine learning to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data. By leveraging algorithms and models, NLP helps in extracting meaningful information from text, making it essential for applications like search engines and virtual assistants.