News: April 2018
Macsen gets more talkative
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting more intelligent by the day. By now many people in Wales have devices such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Now that can answer spoken questions about the weather, news, and other useful facts. They can even respond to a voice asking them to turn on the light, switch on the power, or similar skills. Unfortunately, these only work if spoken to in English, but we are a step nearer getting a similar system in Welsh with our own digital personal assistant Macsen, due to work done at Bangor University, aided by a grant from the Welsh Government. To begin with Macsen could only respond to simple commands, but now it can answer questions, and go to the most popular articles in the Welsh Wikipedia to find relevant information. It can read out the first paragraph of an article, or the news headings, using a Welsh synthetic voice.
Publication date: 10 April 2018