Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to understand and interpret human language. By combining linguistics and computer science, NLP facilitates tasks such as sentiment analysis and text summarization, with a market projected to grow from $15.7 billion in 2022 to $49.4 billion by 2027. Key components include Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG), which allow for meaningful interaction between humans and machines.