Alexa, the virtual assistant of Amazon would support Hindi language in its smartphone app in India. It will be available for millions of Android and iOS users through Alexa app. Amazon has introduced Hindi support on Alexa app to celebrate the first anniversary of Alexa’s Hindi support in India. By 2019, around 60 new features have been added to improve Hindi support on Alexa.
Puneesh Kumar, who is the Country Lead for Alexa, Amazon India stated that the cultural and linguistic diversity has always inspired them to make Alexa more relevant and local for users in the country. The new features added in Alexa’s Hindi support include asking Alexa to whisper, adjust how slow or fast she speaks and functions like asking health-related information or mimic famous Bollywood dialogues to Alexa.
Certain updates have been made in Alexa’s Natural Language Understanding (NLU). Alexa was initially not able to understand words like ‘dhai’ (two and a half) and ‘tham jaa’ (calm down or stop), but now it can. Alexa understands 50 different ways to play a song in Hindi. Amazon has stated that the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) errors have been reduced by more than 40% since 2019 by the Alexa Speech Science team.
Amazon has also announced the addition of new Alexa original Hindi songs and poems with 20 new stories in Hindi. Users can give commands like “Alexa, kuch gungunao” (Alexa, hum something), “Alexa, cricket story sunao” (Alexa, tell me a story about cricket), “Alexa, dosti ki kahani sunao” (Alexa, tell me a story on friendship), “Alexa, cloud rap sunao” (Alexa, play cloud rap). The user needs to give an “Alexa, Hindi mein baat karo” (Alexa, talk in Hindi) command for changing the default language of Alexa to Hindi.