Google to capture diverse Indian dialects for building better AI language models

In recognition of the step change in India’s digital adoption, Google today announced a series of new concerted initiatives with AI for India, aimed at addressing the language divide on the Internet, supporting digitisation of farmland in partnership with the Telangana Government, and new collaborations and investments to drive responsible development of AI in India.

Making a big push for a more inclusive, helpful and secure Internet for every Indian, Google also announced a number of new innovations across Search, focusing on bilingual users'; needs and new search capabilities using camera and voice; a new fraud detection model for secure digital payments on Google Pay; and integration with Digilocker in the Files by Google app on Android to allow for easy access to key digital documents, privately and safely.

Positioning Indian languages support on the Internet as the next big unlock for India’s digital transformation journey, Google announced a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (Project Vaani), to capture diverse Indian dialects for building better AI language models. This collaboration is aimed at collecting and transcribing open source speech data from across all of India’s 773 districts, making it available through the Government of India’s Bhashini project in the future.

Delivering his keynote, at it’s annual flagship Google For India event held in New Delhi, Sanjay Gupta, Country Head and Vice President, Google India, said, “As partners in India’s digital transformation for nearly two decades, we’re deeply inspired by the myriad ways people have woven technology into every aspect of their everyday lives, placing India’s digital transformation at a tipping point. As access continues to broaden, connectivity must become rewarding for all people everywhere, and enable everyone to seamlessly move up the digital value chain for individual progress. We’re excited to launch concerted efforts with AI to democratize this opportunity and solve for languages, security, and transformation of scaled sectors such as agriculture and healthcare. And under the Google for India Digitization fund, we continue to support the innovation ecosystem with a commitment to support early-stage and women-led start-ups.”