Microsoft has launched a new generative AI chatbot called Jugalbandi, a multilingual chatbot accessible via WhatsApp. “The Jugalbandi AI assistant is powered by language models from AI4Bharat, a government-backed initiative, and reasoning models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service,” the tech giant wrote in a blog post.
The chatbot will provide easy access to information in the local language through mobile phones, bridging the language barrier in India where English is spoken by only 11 per cent of the 1.4 billion population. The chatbot understands a user’s issue in their language (spoken or texted) and delivers relevant information even if that exists in some other language in a database somewhere.
How it works
A message sent to the Jugalbandi bot via WhatsApp is transcribed to text using the AI4Bharat speech recognition model and then translated to English by the Bhashini translation model. Based on the prompt, Azure OpenAI Service’s model retrieves information on the relevant government scheme. The answer is translated to Hindi, then converted with the AI4Bharat text-to-speech model and sent back to WhatsApp.
Microsoft’s Jugalbandi was launched in April and was tested in Biwan near New Delhi. The product has expanded to cover 10 of India’s 22 official languages and 171 of a total of approximately 20,000 government programs.