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Andrew Bonwick
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Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
India is a key growth market for Alexa’s global team at Amazon and witnessing the potential, the team is working on to introduce more regional language capabilities in the voice-based assistant that has stormed the living rooms in the country. Though the smart speaker is a relatively young product in India, voice assistants like Alexa in smart devices are gaining immense popularity in the country. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), Amazon Echo led the Indian smart speakers market with 59% share in 2018, followed by Google Home with 39% unit share.
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“Yes, we are working on infusing regional languages capabilities in Alexa for the Indian market but these are early days,a said Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa.
Right now, Alexa can understand some Hinglish commands but these are few and far between. “For us, it is a contextual, cultural as well as content-related challenge as the question is not that Alexa just needs to understand Hindi. This part we can do relatively easily but Alexa needs to be Indian when it speaks in Hindi as there are several dialects and accents out there which Alexa has to understand and react accordingly,” Prasad told IANS on the sidelines of Amazon’s flagship “re: Mars” event here.
According to him, even jokes that are appropriate in the US may not be sound appropriate in the Indian languages.
“These are challenges which are not language dependent but more culture dependent. We believe in introducing a wholesome experience to delight our customers and not something that is half-baked. We are working on to solve these issues in the Indian context,” Prasad added.
