Can Google’s Project Vaani Become a Bane to Meta’s New AI Translator?

Newly released AI translator from Meta may be at risk by Google's Project Vaani! Know more about it

Google's Project Vaani, Multisearch, and other new AI projects have been launched in India, in addition to supporting the digitization of farmland in collaboration with the Telangana government. Google announced several artificial intelligence (AI)-powered initiatives to address the language divide on the Internet. It also announced new investments to promote the responsible development of AI in the nation. A more inclusive experience for many more people who speak Indian languages is now possible. Can Google's Project Vaani become a bane to Meta's New AI translator? This is the biggest question since Google announced a new AI initiative, Project Vaani. Let us know more about these two initiatives.

Meta's New AI Translator: 

A new AI-powered Hokkien Speech Translation System is unveiled by Meta. The first AI-powered translation system for Hokkien, a language that is predominantly spoken, was developed by Meta as part of its Universal Speech Translator (UST) project.

Considering that machine translation methods were previously only available for written languages, the innovation is highly noteworthy. Up until recently, large amounts of written content was typically fed to AI models during training. However, it is now possible for academics to create a translation system for unwritten languages using a variety of sources, including written and spoken data. Up till now, AI translation has mainly focused on written languages. However, among the more than 7,000 languages still in use today, about half are largely oral and do not have a common or widely used writing system. As a result, it is challenging to develop machine translation systems using conventional methods that need vast amounts of text to train an AI model.

The Chinese diaspora speaks a lot of Hokkien, so Meta has created the first AI-powered translation system for this language. Hokkien speakers can communicate with English speakers because of Meta's technology because Hokkien doesn't have a consistent written form. To provide real-time speech-to-speech translation across all known languages, including those that are largely spoken, the Meta project Universal Speech Translator (UST) is creating new AI approaches. One element of UST is the open-sourced AI translation system. No matter where people are, including in the metaverse, verbal communication can help reduce barriers and bring them together, according to Meta.

The new AI Translator from Meta may be at risk because of Google's Project Vaani. 

Project Vaani:

Google announced on December 19, 2022, that it would work with the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) on the project Vaani. Google also stated during its annual flagship 'Google for India' event here that it plans to develop an artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) model to gather linguistic samples from 773 districts across India and make them available through the Center's 'Bhashini' project in the future.

The business additionally disclosed a fresh $1 million funding via Google.Org to Wadhwani AI to utilize cutting-edge technologies for improved agricultural results. Google has been testing "Project Relate," a speech recognition tool that is tuned to the distinctive speech patterns of people who speak in a non-standard manner.

Additionally, Google has given IIT Madras a $1 million investment to help it establish India's first Responsible AI lab. The center's mission is to do research on various biases in artificial intelligence (AI) from an Indian viewpoint.

As part of its announcements, Google also highlighted new developments in its Search platform, including new camera and voice search features, a new fraud detection model for Google Pay's secure digital payments, and integration with Digilocker for Android's Files by Google app, which enables quick access to important digital documents privately and securely.

To provide a more inclusive experience for many more Indian language users, Google has set a goal to create a single, unified model that can handle over 100 Indian languages in both speech and text. With the launch of Multisearch, the business is further enhancing the naturalness of visual search. The next year will see the introduction of various Indian languages, beginning with Hindi, in addition to its availability in English in India.

Conclusion – In India, the business has been testing the app with English users before launching it for Hindi customers in early 2023. Additionally, Google revealed a partnership with the National eGovernment Division (NeGD) that will make it simple for users to access their legitimate digital documents through the Files by Google app for Android.