Google Features Swahili in its AI-Driven Chatbot Bard

Google has included Swahili in its conversational artificial intelligence (AI) service Bard, becoming the first language on the continent to be embedded in the solution.

The tech company included 39 new languages across 59 countries and territories.

Other languages include Chinese, German, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and Spanish.

Bard is now available to users in their chosen language, with text-to-speech functionality available in eight different languages.

“We’re excited that this is Bard’s largest expansion to date – we see its global availability as a great democratizer of knowledge,” Google Sub-Saharan Africa Head of Communications and Public Affairs Dorothy Ooko said.

“That’s why we created Bard: to help you explore that curiosity, augment your imagination and ultimately get your ideas off the ground — not just by answering your questions, but by helping you build on them,” Ooko added.

With more than 200 million speakers, Swahili is one of the top ten languages in the world, according to UNESCO.

“The launch of Bard in Swahili is a major milestone as it allows Bard to reach even more people in Africa, where approximately 150 million people speak Swahili,” Google Language Manager Rachael Ndichu said.

“This makes Bard more accessible to everyone in the region, and we believe that it has the potential to be a powerful tool for creativity and learning,” he said.

“We are excited to see how people in the region use Bard to explore their ideas and discover new things.”

The expansion’s recently launched upgrades include Listen to Responses, which enables users to hear Bard’s comments whenever they click the sound icon and is accessible in more than 40 languages.

This is especially useful if they wish to hear a word spoken correctly, hear a poem, or play read-aloud.

Users can now change the tone and style of Bard’s responses to one of five options: simple, long, short, professional, or casual.

English is the current language for this function, which will soon be available in more.