Bangalore-based Gnani.ai has built an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system designed to ease language barriers along India's borders. The new system specializes in machine translation and speech-to-text conversion for Mandarin, and it was created specifically for the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and local law enforcement to make border negotiations easier. The same firm supplied an artificial intelligence system to the Indian Army last year that is already in use on the western and eastern borders.
What Gnani.ai built for the armed forces
The Automatic Speech Recognition system focuses on Mandarin, the Chinese language. According to co-founder Ananth Nagaraj, Gnani.ai trained the system on more than 8,000 hours of Mandarin audio data to teach the machine how to recognize and translate speech.
Nagaraj says the army does not have as much proficiency in Mandarin as it should, which is why the firm designed this new speech recognition system. He notes that Mandarin is used in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Where the system is used
The firm says the system is intended for a range of border and intelligence tasks, including:
- Cross-border intelligence gathering
- Voice surveillance
- Monitoring telephone and internet communication
- Radio and satellite communication
- Border meetings
Gnani.ai says the system can detect and reduce noise, handle different accents, and support all types of audio file formats. You can find more coverage like this across our gadgets section.
How Gnani.ai decodes enemy code words
According to Nagaraj, the artificial intelligence system he developed lets the army decode the code words used by terrorists and enemy forces. Codes such as potato and gobi, which terrorists commonly use to refer to grenades, are built into the system. The army can decode millions of such codes in minutes.
Nagaraj added that he has a team of 50 people working on artificial intelligence at the firm.
