Google to partner with IISC for Project Vaani

Google plans to collaborate with the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) for project Vaani. As per the official announcement, Project Vaani aims to ensure the collected and produced data will be open-source.

This collaboration is aimed to build an artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) model to collect and transcribe open-source speech data from across all of India’s 773 districts, making it available through the Government of India’s Bhashini project in the future.

This means anyone building language solutions for India - startups, developers, students - will be able to use this richly diverse speech data to create technology that reflects the way every Indian speaks their local language.

In the coming months, the model will also be able to detect specific events for each field, like when a crop was sown, harvested and more. This project will also enable the AgriStack and other solutions for India’s agricultural ecosystem, with a focus on identifying farm-level landscape and farm boundaries, and potentially identify crops grown in each field.

This information will support building a publicly-accessible dataset for enabling digital public goods and services, while spurring innovation across the agriculture value chain. The tech giant also announced a fund of $1 million to Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras to build India’s first Responsible AI center. The center aims to research on various aspects of bias in artificial intelligence (AI) in Indian perspective.