This August 14, Amazon introduced Cleo skill with the aim to make Alexa friendlier for the Indian user. This new skill will allow the users to teach Alexa multiple local languages including Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, and more. The reason behind the launch of Cleo is to make Alexa more user-friendly for the multilingual Indian population. Amazon believes this initiative will help them to have a direct connection with the users. Janet Slifka, Senior Manager, Research Science, Alexa Artificial Intelligence at Amazon, says, the scope of Cleo skill is not limited to the handful of Indian languages, rather it is an interactive way to help Alexa improve its speech recognition and natural language understanding.
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The process of developing a new language boosts data availability, machine learning, and computing power, which will help Alexa to improve progressively with the incorporation of new data. Cleo will assist Alexa to improvise its language model, comprehend pronunciation pattern of local languages, and make its word choice better.
Amazon has realized the potential of the Indian market. Out of 325 million Indian 195 million people are the local language internet users. It means more than half of the users prefer native language over English. Thus, the introduction of Cleo skill was important.
Cleo lets the user respond to Alexa in their local dialect or language. This is an apt way to add local speaking comportment to the voice assistant that comes preinstalled in many smart speakers, smartphones, and displays including Amazon Eco speakers.
How does Cleo Skill work?
Ask the Echo speaker to enable Cleo by commanding, “Alexa, open Cleo” or open the Alexa app and enable the Cleo skill from the Skills section. Next Alexa will ask you to choose the language you want to speak, for instance, say “Hindi” or “Marathi” and then it will ask you to confirm your choice. This is the first learning round for the voice assistant.
During the learning process, Alexa will ask you to say at least five different things or something specific in your selected language. This will help Alexa learn new phrases and words in your local language, which will result in a smooth interaction. The aim of the process is to speak the language naturally to make you feel as you are talking to your family member or friend in your native language.
If you want to end the round you can do it any time by saying, “Alexa, Stop.” Likewise, you can check the progress of the learning process by asking, “Alexa, ask Cleo how I am doing?”. Cleo has this amazing feature of offering badges and ranks to the users to keep their interest alive in the training process.
This new innovation in the Alexa technology bought by Amazon has influenced the Indian market a lot. The success of Alexa has surprised Amazon itself. With the advancement of Cleo into Alexa, Amazon has powered the next revolution in voice, by educating people to learn second languages, helped those who are hard of hearing and even for hands free computing.
