In order to advance research in speech, language, and multimodal AI, Amazon is working with IIT Bombay. A multi-year partnership between Amazon and IIT Bombay’s artificial intelligence and machine learning program will provide funding for research initiatives, PhD fellowships, and civic activities.
According to Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist at Alexa, “Amazon’s expanding research and development operations in India have powered engagement with Alexa users in Hindi and Indic languages, and their AI/ML innovations have delivered increasingly pleasurable shopping experiences.”
Currently, Amazon provides services to roughly 600 million Indians. With 22 official languages and more than 19,500 dialects, India’s variety presents hurdles for conversational AI that are addressed by the company’s research Centre in Bengaluru.
Using India’s multilingualism as a learning lab, this investment at one of the top academic institutions in the world will bring together Amazon scientists and IIT Bombay students and professors to develop new AI systems that can learn and adapt to many languages, accents, and dialects. According to Prasad, these initiatives will help progress the technology necessary for conversational AI’s future.
IIT Bombay, which has the largest computer science department in Asia, is a prominent engineering university in India and is renowned for its innovative AI/ML research. Its computer science and engineering department is one of the biggest in the subcontinent, with 45 full-time faculty members.
According to Milind Atrey, dean of research and development at IIT Bombay, “this collaboration will foster innovation in three ways: through community projects, research projects, and fellowships, which will in fact spur development in the AI and ML domains, as well as other areas, as the relationship progresses.”
Program for Amazon Research Grants
The Amazon Research Grants program has already established relationships between Amazon and IIT Bombay. Preethi Jyothi, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Bombay, received the most recent prize in 2022 for her work on fairness in voice recognition.
“Companies engaged in scientific research have always been drawn to our finest research talent. We aim to be able to accelerate the implementation of technologies/products in the field of AI/ML with industry collaborators like Amazon who have a strong understanding of technology and a worldwide reach,” says Subhasis Chaudhuri, director at IIT Bombay.
