Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese multinational conglomerate specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Due to their extensive interest in technology, Alibaba now plans to revolutionize Artificial Intelligence – AI.
On Wednesday, Alibaba announced that it is ready to invest a whopping total of RMB 100 million (approx. $15 million). Labs at Alibaba are planning to work on the development of a comprehensive database of dialogue-based dialectal samples which will be recorded and handled by a dedicated application and smart speakers.
Did someone say, smart speakers?
If yes, then Alibaba and Group are in luck. With the effective use of their smart speakers, Tmall Genie, they will be able to achieve their milestones at a relatively quick pace. Tmall will train on tedious and lengthy datasets generated by the enormous dialectal database. Due to which, it will be able to recognize the standard dialect. Starting from the Southwestern Sichuan province first, the product will continue to record and train itself on all significant dialects shortly. Therefore, the company is affiliating with government institutions, universities and a variety of linguistic experts for the pursuance and achievement of their goal.
The significance of the AI project
China consists of a total of 23 provinces that share Mandarin as a common language. Considering the stats, there are approximately one hundred dialects that differ according to regions. The written elements are mostly similar, but the spoken elements can be entirely dissimilar, which create significant challenges for voice-controlled smart devices. As a result, any smart speakers with the ability to comprehend the variety of dialects accurately will be the best-sellers to their counterparts without a competition.
IMAGE SOURCE: ALIBABA
