Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa is now available in Hindi on the Alexa app, the company announced on Friday.
One year after the launch of Alexa in Hindi, the company has added Hindi support to the Alexa app.
“Starting now, customers can interact with Alexa in Hindi on their Android or iOS smartphones using the Alexa app,” Amazon said in an official release.
Users can switch to Hindi from the settings option on the Alexa app.
“Introducing Hindi made Alexa accessible to hundreds of millions of native Hindi speakers. We have made several improvements in Natural Language Understanding. Similarly, we will continue to make Alexa interactions in Hindi even more seamless and conversational. It is still Day 1,” said Puneesh Kumar, Country Leader for Alexa, Amazon India.
Improvements in Hindi support
Amazon has also added over 60 new features since launching Hindi support to Alexa in the past year, it said.
The features include asking Alexa to whisper, adjust the speed at which she speaks as well as asking her for health-related information powered by myUpchar.com, among others.
The company has also worked on improving Alexa’s speech science. The voice assistant can understand 50 different ways to play a particular song in Hindi, Amazon said.
It has also reduced Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) errors made by the AI by more than 40 per cent since launch. It equipped with a wider Hindi vocabulary with a 30 per cent improvement in Natural Language Understanding (NLU).
What do users ask Alexa?
“Each day, Alexa gets hundreds of thousands of requests in Hindi and Hinglish,” Amazon said.
These requests include asking Alexa to play music, ask questions, read the news, set timers and alarms, check the calendar, provide sports scores, control lights at home, watch videos on Echo devices with a screen, among others.
“At least one customer says ‘I love you’ to Alexa every minute. Alexa also gets at least one marriage proposal ex. “Mujse shaadi karogi? (Alexa, will you marry me?)” each minute,” Amazon said.
It has also added over 1,000 Hindi Skills since launch. Apart from the app, Alexa in Hindi is available on the entire Amazon Echo range of smart speakers and Alexa built-in devices by other brands. Users can switch the language on other devices by saying “Alexa, Hindi mei baat karo” (Alexa, talk in Hindi).