Kazakh programmers developed a smart speaker. It can support almost any conversation, give advice and answer such questions as weather forecast or currency exchange rates. And it’s all in Kazakh. According to its creators, the primary task of the gadget is to popularize the state language.
“We had personal motives, among others, that prompted us to actively work on the development. We are currently negotiating with potential customers. And there is also the possibility of implementing a project in other languages, for which there are no voice assistants, smart speakers or similar speech recognition solutions yet. We also accept pre-orders and conduct closed testing,” said Nurgozha Kaliaskarov, Project Manager of an IT Holding.
The voice assistant doesn’t have a name yet. The appearance of the device is also being refined. However, it will definitely depict national attributes. They are also expanding the range of features of the gadget. They expect it to be fully ready for bulk marketing by the end of the year. It will also be available in mobile application format.
“We started working on the project in 2019. It was a very long process. We were collecting data manually, so the most important advantage we have is the data that we’ve been working with. Our database consists of almost 5,000 hours of audio and text data. The recognition accuracy of Kazakh and mixed language is now over 75 percent, we are even approaching 80 percent. And it is the highest rate in the country,” noted Dinara Alimova, Head of the Speech Technology Laboratory.
In addition, the same project allows Kazakh residents to transcribe audio to text in Kazakh on a special website. This technology will greatly assist virtual assistants, visually impaired, as well as navigation and other systems.
Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova
Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova
