Samsung India research unit adds Hindi to Galaxy AI, ramps up tech for rest

Korean electronics giant Samsung's research and development centre in Bengaluru has developed the Hindi AI model for Galaxy AI and ramped up the technology for some other languages, including Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian, the company said on Monday.

Samsung R&D Institute India-Bengaluru (SRI-B) -- Samsung's largest research and development centre outside Korea -- collaborated with teams around the world to develop AI language models for British, Indian, and Australian English as well, the company said in a statement.

"SRI-B developed the Hindi language for Galaxy AI. Developing the Hindi AI model wasn't simple. The team had to ensure more than 20 regional dialects, tonal inflections, punctuation and colloquialisms were covered.

"Additionally, it is common for Hindi speakers to mix English words in their conversations," the statement said.

The company said developing Hindi model for Galaxy AI required the team to carry out multiple rounds of AI model training with a combination of translated and transliterated data.

"Hindi has a complex phonetic structure that includes retroflex sounds -- sounds made by curling the tongue back in the mouth -- which are not present in many other languages.

"To build the speech synthesis element of the AI solution, we carefully reviewed data with native linguists to understand all the unique sounds and created a special set of phenomes to support specific dialects of the language," SRI-B Head of Language AI Giridhar Jakki said.

At present, several companies have started initiative to develop AI models for Indian languages with Hindi being one of the major language.

"The Vellore Institute of Technology helped secure almost a million lines of segmented and curated audio data on conversational speech, words and commands. Data was a crucial component for a task as critical as incorporating the fourth most spoken language in the world into Galaxy AI. Working with universities ensured Samsung was using the highest quality data," the statement said.

SRI-B also collaborated with teams around the world to develop AI language models for British, Indian and Australian English as well as Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian.
Samsung brands its AI technology platform as Galaxy AI.

Galaxy AI now supports 16 languages, so more people can expand their language capabilities even when it is offline, the statement added.