Bangalore, September 19, 2020: As Alexa in Hindi completes one year, Amazon has made it available to millions of smartphone users in India. Customers can interact with Alexa in Hindi on their Android or iOS smart phones using the Alexa app.
Open the Alexa app, visit settings >> Alexa on this phone >> and select 'हिंदी' from available languages. This announcement comes on the first anniversary of Alexa’s Hindi support in India.
Amazon has added over 60 new features since launching Hindi support to Alexa in the past year. To commemorate this first anniversary of Hindi support on Alexa, customers in India can ask, “Alexa, hamari dosti par poem sunao”. Amazon has also added 6 new Alexa original songs and poems, along with 20 new stories in Hindi. For instance, say “Alexa, kuch gungunao”, “Alexa, cloud rap sunao”, “Alexa, cricket story sunao”, or “Alexa, dosti ki kahani sunao”.
Says Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, Amazon India:“India’s unique cultural and linguistic diversity has always inspired us to make Alexa more local and relevant for users in the country. Introducing Hindi made Alexa accessible to hundreds of millions of native Hindi speakers. We have made several improvements in Natural Language Understanding. For example, Alexa was not able to understand words like ‘dhai’ & ‘tham jaa’ in the beginning, but now she does. Similarly, we will continue to make Alexa interactions in Hindi even more seamless and conversational. It is still Day 1.”
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Blog by Puneesh: Alexa in Hindi - a year-long journey
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In an effort to make Alexa in Hindi more useful for customers, Amazon has added over 60 new features in the past year. These include improvements such as asking Alexa to whisper, adjust how fast or slow she speaks, and new experiences such as asking Alexa for health-related information powered by myUpchar.com, mimic Bollywood dialogues by the name of actors/ actresses and so on.Improvements in Alexa's Speech Science
Alexa can now understand 50 different ways to play a particular song in Hindi. The Alexa Speech Science team has used the latest advances in deep neural networks, multi-dialect training, and semi-supervised learning to reduce Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) errors by more than 40% since launch of Hindi last year. Ex. Alexa is much better at recognising words like ‘dhai’ & ’tham jaa’ in requests such as “Alexa, dhai baje ka alarm set karo” or “Alexa, tham jaa”.
The Alexa Natural Language Understanding (NLU) team has driven numerous initiatives towards algorithmic improvement of Alexa’s understanding of Hindi. A large part of the capability is driven through machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Alexa is now equipped with hundreds of new words from the Hindi vocabulary, and is also able to understand different ways in which customers can ask for the same information. Such initiatives led to a 30% improvement in NLU accuracy. E.x. Alexa can support a wide range of requests such as “Alexa, mere orders dikhao”, “Alexa, mera samaan ka update kya hai?”, “Alexa, meri samagri kitni door hai?“ and “Alexa, mera package kab milega?”.