Alexa will soon be able to understand Hindi and other Indian regional languages

Since India is one of the major markets for Amazon, it's catering to their needs by announcing that its voice-based assistant, Alexa, will now be able to speak in not just Hindi but other Indian regional languages as well.Smart speakers are gradually gaining popularity in India and to escalate this growth, Amazon is now working on introducing Hindi along with other regional languages, as per a report by IANS, to make it more interactive by applying new machine learning capabilities.Amazon also introduced a new category of skill called Cleo last year that enabled customers in India to help Alexa learn Hindi and other Indian languages. Along with Hindi, users can respond to Alexa in Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and other regional languages.In an interview with IANS, Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa said it is important for Alexa to understand Hindi as it will push back several cultural and content-related challenges that they face. He thinks that something that is as insignificant a joke which is funny in the English language does not have the same effect in Hindi or other Indian languages. He thinks it's not the language that is the main problem but is culturally dependent. So, they needed to work on a wholesome experience for the Indian users.