Indic Language Stack for Voice Assistants and Conversational AI
Published: 2020-12-17 04:27:09

*Bhārat Bhāṣā Stack will catalyze Voice Assistant and Conversational AI innovations for vernacular Indic languages as India Stack did for FinTech.*

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A decade ago, nobody could imagine how digital payments happen today in India. Even street vendors accept money as small as 50 rupees (less than a dollar) on mobile phone. Neither the seller or buyer has to pay any transaction fee. Street vendors don't have deep pockets to build payment gateways either.

It became possible due to [Unified Payment Interface (UPI)](https://www.npci.org.in/product-overview/upi-product-overview) of the [India Stack](https://www.indiastack.org/about/). It is the digital infrastructure for authentication, payment, and authorization. Every bank implements UPI, so all mobile wallets are interoperable and free of cost.

India speaks several languages, and a large part of the population is neither tech-savvy nor English literate. In-app Voice Assistants are the natural choice to take the benefits of the internet to the masses.

But building these assistants takes a huge investment that small companies can not afford. Just as India Stack offered digital payment infrastructure, we need an affordable Indic Language Stack for conversational AI.

## Indic Language Stack

The [Indic Language Stack for Conversational AI](https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/vernacular-indic-language-bharat-bhasha-stack-for-conversational-ai-and-voice-assistant-apps) consists of voice and language technologies:

* **Listen:** Convert speech audio to text. It is called [**Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)**](https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/automatic-speech-recognition-in-python-programs) or [**Speech-to-Text (STT)**](https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/how-to-build-python-transcriber-using-mozilla-deepspeech).
* **Understand:** Understand meaning or intent in the text, and extract important entities. It is called [**Natural Language Understanding (NLU)**](https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/natural-language-processing-for-voice-assistants-101).
* **Speak:** Ask questions to clarify, confirm, or seek needed information from the user. It is called **Speech Synthesis** or **Text-to-Speech (TTS)**.
* **Translate:** Humans speak different languages. Applications may need to translate text from one language to another. It is called Machine Translation (MT).
* **Phonetically Translate:** Many people type Indic languages using phonetic spellings on roman keyboards. The computers may need to do phonetic-translation of the text to Indic language scripts. It is called **Transliteration**.
* **See/Read:** The ability to recognize images of handwritten or printed characters. It is called **Optical Character Recognition (OCR)**.

It has layers to offer diverse entry point based of need and maturity of an organisation:

* **Script:** India has several scripts, almost one per language
* **Data:** Training data is the biggest and most expensive barrier
* **Models:** Even when data is available, traning deep learning model is unaffordable for small organisations.
* **Software as a Service (SaaS):** SaaS frees developers from hosting the model and managing the service infrastructure. It makes it easier to start building applications.
* **Software Development Kit (SDK):** SDKs in popular programming languages and OS platforms form the final layer. SDKs can use the models or SaaS.

![Indic Language Stack](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/yzsxmxc1g2vxv4ekot7j.png)

## Ecosystem Participants

It will take systematic and sustained collaboration to design and build the Bhārat Bhāṣā Stack:

* **Academia** sharing research paper with code on Conversational AI problems relevant to India.
* **Industry** building voice-enabled products and services for the common man.
* **Government** playing a role like the one in building India Stack.
* **Industry Bodies** speeding up collaboration through conferences and consortiums.

[More details » ](https://www.slanglabs.in/blog/vernacular-indic-language-bharat-bhasha-stack-for-conversational-ai-and-voice-assistant-apps)