AWS adds Hindi to its text-to-speech service Amazon Polly, making ‘Aditi’ the first bilingual voice available on the service.
Amazon Web Services, an Amazon.com company better known as AWS, announced the addition of Hindi language support for Amazon Polly. Introduced in November 2016, Amazon Polly is a machine learning service that converts text into speech. The addition of Hindi to Amazon Polly marks the birth of the service’s first bilingual voice because it already featured an Indian English voice named Aditi.
Currently, Aditi and Raveena are the two Indian English voices available on the text-to-speech service. According to a press release AWS, organisations are already in the process of using the newly added bilingual Indian English/Hindi voice to enhance automated customer engagement applications, interactive voice responses, audio news, and targeted vernacular language services.
“Amazon Polly’s launch of Hindi language support is a real game-changer for us,” commented Ashish Gupta, the Chief Technology Officer of Policybazaar.com and Chief Executive Officer of DocPrime.com. “We are already using the Hindi capability for our IVR and automated outbound updates to customers, and we saw an increase in engagement with these messages. Soon, we will be releasing a Hindi voice-bot that will enhance our customers’ experience further by providing 24×7 service,” Gupta added.
According to AWS, Duolingo is also a big taker of the newly updated service. Duolingo is a popular language-learning platform on mobile platforms like Android and iOS. It currently offers over 80 courses in 31 languages. Last month, Duolingo crossed the 10-million-users mark and unveiled its latest Hindi-learning course for English speakers. The service was reportedly developed using Amazon Polly’s new voice, Aditi.
“Amazon Polly's Aditi Hindi voice fit our needs perfectly because of its exceptional quality and natural-sounding voice. We are looking forward to continuing to work with Amazon Polly on more text-to-speech solutions in the future," commented Natalie Glance, the Vice President of Engineering at Duolingo. The Amazon Polly portfolio now includes 53 voices across 26 languages and is available in 14 AWS regions, including Asia Pacific (Mumbai).
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Vignesh Giridharan
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