New Delhi: Amazon Alexa is working on to introduce more regional language capabilities, including Hindi, in the voice-based assistant, in view of the device gaining immense popularity in the country.
“Yes, we are working on infusing regional languages capabilities in Alexa for the Indian market but these are early days, said Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa.
Right now, Alexa can understand some Hinglish commands but these are few and far between.
“For us, it is a contextual, cultural as well as content-related challenge as the question is not that Alexa just needs to understand Hindi. This part we can do relatively easily but Alexa needs to be Indian when it speaks in Hindi as there are several dialects and accents out there which Alexa has to understand and react accordingly,” Prasad told IANS on the sidelines of Amazon’s flagship “re: Mars” event here
Amazon last year launched a new category of skill called “Cleo” that enables customers in India to help Alexa learn Hindi and other languages. The idea was to improve Alexa’s language model and help her gradually speak in local languages.
Apart from Hindi, users can respond to Alexa’s English statements in Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and other regional languages.
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