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\u201cNani, aaj kya banaya?\u201d (\u201dGrandma, what did you cook today?\u201d)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a simple question that millions of Indians ask every day. But what if you asked it to an AI assistant? Would it understand the language? The accent? The mix of Hindi and English? What if the question was asked in Tulu, Bundeli, Kodava or Santali instead?<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence has become more advanced at answering questions, translating languages and even writing stories. But there\u2019s a catch. Most AI systems learnt these skills from enormous amounts of digital data \u2014 books, websites, videos and conversations, much of it in English. For many Indian languages and dialects, especially those spoken by smaller communities, that kind of digital treasure trove simply doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
So how do you teach a machine to understand a country where languages change every few hundred kilometres, accents shift from district to district, and some words are spoken every day but have never been written down?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the challenge researchers at AI4Bharat, a research lab at IIT Madras, have taken on. Their mission is ambitious: to build AI that can understand, speak and translate India\u2019s many languages, making technology more accessible to millions. We spoke to Kaushal Bhogale, a PhD researcher at AI4Bharat, to find out how his team is teaching AI to speak India, one voice, one conversation and one language at a time.<\/p>\n