Hindi is the second-most used language globally on Assistant, Google’s artificial intelligence powered assistant, just behind English. Manuel Bronstein, Google VP Product Management, said that Indians have been using “the power of voice” to do things like finding information to help with homework, getting train schedules, etc. Users can now talk to Assistant in Hindi by saying “Hey Google, talk to me in Hindi”. Google is adding more Indian languages to its other products. Discover, its news feed app, will I support Oriya, Urdu and Punjabi. Google Lens, which allows users to search for information by pointing their phone’s camera at things, will support Tamil, Telugu and Marathi, while its speech-based Bolo app that helps children learn to read, will support Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. The tech giant will even make Assistant available in Hindi on all Android TVs.
Tech companies like Google and Amazon are betting on vernacular languages as reports suggest that 90 per cent of new internet users in India are native language speakers.
This makes it imperative for these tech companies to offer rich experience in local languages in India that is witnessing strong growth in internet usage as well as consumption of connected devices.
On Wednesday, Amazon had announced that users in India can now speak to its voice assistant Alexa in Hindi to can now speak to its voice assistant Alexa in Hindi to carry out tasks like checking cricket scores, requesting songs and even asking how she’s doing.
Picture Credit : Google
