Amazon's Alexa to develop Hindi skills for customers in India

Amazon's Alexa will now be able to speak in Hindi. The company today stated that developers would now start building Alexa skills in Hindi for customers in India with the new Hindi voice model available in Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). The ASK is a collection of free, self-service APIs and tools that make it fast and easy for developers to create skills, or capabilities, for Alexa.

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. Currently, Alexa is available in over 80 countries and speaks more than 14 language variants.

Commercial hardware manufacturers, who want to develop Alexa Built-in products for Hindi-speaking customers in India, can request early access to the invite-only Alexa Voice Service (AVS) developer preview. Last year, Amazon launched a new category of skill called "Cleo" that enables customers in India help Alexa learn Hindi and other languages. 

लाइफ इंश्योरेंस प्रोडक्ट्स में हुए बदलावों से ग्राहकों को कितना फायदा? देखिए इंडिया फ़र्स्ट लाइफ इंश्योरेंस की MD आर एम विशाखा से अनुराग शाह की खास बातचीत।@anuragshah710 @IndiaFirst_Life pic.twitter.com/ESGicpkntY

— Zee Business (@ZeeBusiness) July 16, 2019

Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa, recently told IANS that the company is working on infusing regional languages capabilities in Alexa for the Indian market but these are early days.

According to the statement, interested people can sign up for the first webinar on Hindi skill building scheduled on July 24. Developers in India who have their Hindi-language skill certified for publication in India before July 31 would receive exclusive early bird Alexa merchandise. Alexa is stated to understand some Hinglish commands but these are few and far between.