Swahili takes giant stride on Google AI
Google said on February 6, 2023 it will release a conversational chatbot named Bard. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
“The launch of Bard in Swahili is a major milestone as it allows Bard to reach even more people in Africa, where approximately 150 million people speak Swahili,” Rachael Ndichu, the language manager at Google
Mid last month, Google announced the expansion of its conversational AI service, Bard, to 40 new languages.
This included Swahili—the first African language to be included to the service available across 59 new countries and territories.
The expansion includes new features that allow end users to better customise their experience, boost their creativity, and get more done.
With the expansion, Bard is now available in most of the world, including countries in the European Union (EU).
Along with Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi, and Spanish, it is one of the most widely spoken languages. Users can now access Bard in their preferred language with text-to-speech also enabled in eight languages.
“We’re excited that this is Bard’s largest expansion to date—we see its global availability as a great democratiser of knowledge,” said Dorothy Ooko, the head of communications and public affairs, SSA, Google. “That’s why we created Bard. To help you explore that curiosity, augment your imagination and ultimately get your ideas off the ground — not just by answering your questions, but by helping you build on them.”
According to Unesco, Swahili is among the 10 most widely spoken languages in the world. It boasts of more than 200 million speakers.
“The launch of Bard in Swahili is a major milestone as it allows Bard to reach even more people in Africa, where approximately 150 million people speak Swahili,” said Rachael Ndichu, the language manager at Google, adding, “This makes Bard more accessible to everyone in the region, and we believe that it has the potential to be a powerful tool for creativity and learning.”
Updates
As part of the expansion, the new updates launched include listen to responses, which is available in more than 40 languages and allows users to listen to Bard’s responses once they select the sound icon.
This is especially helpful if they want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script.
Users can also now adjust Bard’s responses by changing the tone and style of its responses to five different options; simple, long, short, professional or casual. This feature is live in English and will expand to new languages soon.
Google has also launched four new features to help users get more done.
Users can now pin and rename their conversations with Bard, making it easier to revisit conversations that contain important information or ideas.
Through the export code to more places feature, users can now export Python code to Replit, in addition to Google Colab, making it easier for users to share their code with others or use it in other projects.
Users will also be able to share responses with friends, using shareable links, making it easier to collaborate on projects or get feedback on ideas.
Also launched is a feature allowing users to upload images with prompts to Bard.
Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of Google’s large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide responses.
As an experimental technology, Bard may occasionally make inaccurate statements in response to user prompts.
So if a response from Bard is inaccurate or unsafe, if one experiences an issue, or just wants to provide feedback, there’s an easy way to do that.
