Bhashini Showcases GenAI Technology at Mint AI Summit, Targeting Non-English-Speaking Populations in India
India’s national language database platform, Bhashini, took center stage at the 2023 Mint AI Summit, as it unveiled the beta-stage deployment of its multi-model generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) services. With a focus on reaching the vast majority of non-English-speaking populations, Bhashini aims to extend the benefits of this technology to the hinterlands of India.
During the summit, Amitabh Nag, the CEO of Bhashini, demonstrated the platform’s capabilities by showcasing voice-driven contactless digital payments through UPI. This showcases how GenAI can serve as a digital public good and highlights the importance of technology infrastructure in empowering various communities across different economic strata.
Building purpose-driven AI models emerged as a key aspect of Bhashini’s deployment of GenAI. Nag emphasized that the narrowness of use cases necessitates equally narrow datasets for swift service deployment. With this in mind, Bhashini faces a critical challenge in sourcing sufficient digital datasets in regional languages.
Addressing this issue, Nag revealed that Bhashini currently spends around $6-7 million to collect data for languages that lack digital representation. He emphasized that language databases lay the foundation for personalizing services, making Bhashini’s efforts to build up these databases even more important. One such initiative is the crowdsourcing model named Bhasha Daan, which collects data to establish organized language datasets.
As part of the India AI Mission’s datasets platform, Bhashini incorporates multiple AI models. Nag explained that these models can perform approximately 100,000 inferences per day, with the capacity to scale up to 500,000 inferences. This infrastructure is seen as vital in bridging India’s digital divide and facilitating the incorporation of speech interfaces and multi-modal input interfaces to bridge both digital and literacy gaps in the long run.
By leveraging GenAI technology and focusing on regional language databases, Bhashini aims to bring the benefits of AI to the majority of India’s population. Through their efforts, they hope to empower communities and reduce disparities across the nation.
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