IITs and NITI Aayog Collaborate to Develop Virtual Assistant in Indian Languages

An established Union Cabinet’s wing National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, also known as the think tank of the Indian Government, has collaborated with IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Patna and other IITs, for the work on an Indianised edition of a smart virtual assistant capable of interacting in approx 18 different local dialects with the concerned users. These virtual assistants commonly known as Chatbots, till now can be accessed only in one language, English. With this initiative the reach will spread, helping more end users to benefit out of this technology.

According to a report, the collaboration of NITI Aayog and IIT Patna under Director Pushpak Bhattacharyya has been made to develop a processor of language, natural in nature, for the purpose of commercial use. The news was confirmed by Bhattacharyya who has been operatively working with multi-linguality, aspect-based sentiment analysis and cross-linguality.

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IIT Patna’s Director Mr. Bhattacharyya has also said that the Ministry of Information Technology has commissioned this project. Mr. Pushpak also highlighted that there are 14 institutes involved in a project plan called Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL).

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Moving on further with his statements, he added that, a new and unique conceptual dictionary is being created for the end users to extract a number of benefits from it. These benefits include getting correct and accurate word meanings along with translation assistance, dialogue generation, information recovery and question-answering in 18 different Indian dialects. Creating a great impact on e-commerce establishments, educational hubs and other companies including the airlines, that uses the technology of chatbots will now be able to converse in multiple languages.