New Cleo skill will let users teach Alexa to speak local Indian languages

Developed by a team of linguists and data scientists from around the world, Cleo has already helped Alexa enhance its understanding of local languages like French.

Amazon today announced a new skill that will let its Indian customers teach local languages to its virtual assistant Alexa including Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati and other Indian languages. 

Skills make Alexa smarter and enable customers to do more with voice. Called as 'Cleo', the new skill allows users to share more information about Indian languages and culture with Alexa by interacting with her. The process of creating new languages for Alexa, as the company told, benefits from advances in data availability, computing power, and a subset of artificial intelligence called machine learning.

Developed by a team of linguists and data scientists from around the world, Cleo has already helped Alexa enhance its understanding of local languages like French. Cleo can be enabled within the “Skills” section of the Alexa app or by simply asking the Echo or other Alexa-enabled devices to enable it. You will be prompted by Alexa in English to respond to her in your chosen language or dialect. 

"Alexa gets smarter every day and now customers in India can help Alexa learn Hindi, and other Indian languages, using the new Cleo skill," Amazon said in a statement. The more they use Cleo, the more it will improve Alexa's speech recognition and natural language understanding in the long term," it added.

Getting started with Cleo (Instructions)

1. Say “Alexa, open Cleo.” 

2. Alexa will describe how the skill works and ask you for the language you speak. Say the name of your language in English (e.g. “French”, “Mandarin”, “Hindi”). 

3. Alexa will ask you to confirm the language and will move into the first learning round.

4. During each round, Alexa will ask you to say at least five things in your language. Wait for her to prompt you and then go ahead and respond in the language you specified. She may ask you to say something specific or to just say anything at all. The type of round will differ each time you play.

5. Aim to speak as naturally as possible in your language. It’s better to say something naturally than to translate. 

6. To close Cleo during a learning round, just say “Alexa, stop.”

Amazon Alexa, the cloud-based smart virtual assistant developed by Amazon currently engages with its users in English. Besides performing simple tasks like playing music, Alexa can also be used to control smart-home gadgets.

(Video Credit: YouTube/ Alexa Developers)