But the default voices for these assistants are often white American--British, if you're lucky--and most definitely speak English. And if you're one of the billions of people who don't speak English, bad luck: These tools don't sound nearly as good in other languages. This is because the data that has gone into training these models is limited. In AI research, most data used to train models is extracted from the English-language internet, which reflects Anglo-American culture. But there is a massive grassroots effort underway to change this status quo and bring more transparency and diversity to what AI sounds like.

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And it starts right at the beginning. Instead of the Hmong word for "hello" or "welcome," she says, is "something else that said, like, 'your honor' or'the queen' or'the king' instead." Seeing something so simple done incorrectly was frustrating and off-putting. "Not only was it just probably churned through Google Translate, it wasn't even peer edited and reviewed to ensure that there was fluency and coherence," she says. Xiong says this kind of carelessness is common online--and it's one reason she and others in the Hmong community can feel excluded from politics.

There is no surprise that artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm. The technology is increasingly being used across diverse business functions and revolutionizing all aspects of life and work. AI enables computers to learn from a voluminous amount of data to perform menial and complex tasks. Its applications have been of great value for both an organization or an individual, assisting them in doing their work with ease and getting things done on time. As AI is different from rule-based automation solutions and uses machine learning and NLP, this tech is expected to be as important for humans as electricity and the internet.

ELSA, an app whose name stands for "English Language Speech Assistant" (and not the popular Disney character!), Unlike other courses that focus mainly on teaching grammar and vocabulary, ELSA uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to help language learners with their pronunciation. The $3.2 million pre-A round of funding was led by Monk's Hill Ventures, a firm that invests in post-seed stage startups in Southeast Asia. Monk's Hill founder and partner, Peng T. Ong, is joining ELSA's board. The San Francisco-based startup was originally founded in 2015 by Stanford grad Vu Van, ELSA CEO, and Dr. Xavier Anguera, whose background is in speech recognition and A.I. technologies. It debuted at SXSW in March 2016, where it later won the SXSWedu launch competition.

Samsung Electronics said its Bixby voice assistant for smartphones will start speaking English but only in two countries: South Korea and the U.S. The South Korean tech giant said starting Wednesday, users of the Galaxy S8 smartphones can speak in American English to their phones to turn on the flashlight, take a selfie or make the phone search for say, pictures from a summer vacation, and create an album. Samsung did not say why it could not make Bixby in English available to users outside South Korea or the U.S. or when it will become available in other languages in other countries. The service, comparable to Apple's Siri or Google Assistant, was previously available only in Korean. Samsung says its virtual assistant can be activated by saying "Hi Bixby" to the phone or by clicking a button on the side of the S8 phones. The rollout of the Bixby English version was delayed by a couple of months.

When the Samsung Galaxy S8 was released in April, users were disappointed to find that their device was missing Bixby, the firm's highly-anticipated digital assistant. And now, it appears that the launch of Bixby may have been struck by further delays. A new report suggests that Samsung's digital assistant is'struggling to comprehend English' forcing developers to continue working on it. It appears that the launch of Bixby may have been struck by delays. A new report suggests that Samsung's digital assistant is'struggling to comprehend English' forcing developers to continue working on it According to Samsung, Bixby is'a completely new way to use your Galaxy S8 or S8 .' Users can use voice, text, or touch to say what they need, since it understands all three.

Siri isn't bi-lingual or even tri-lingual, the best word to describe Siri would be to call her (or him) a polyglot, or one who has mastered many languages, as she heads towards mastering Shanghainese. Apple's voice assist currently knows 21 languages localized with different dialects for more than 36 countries and regions, according to Reuters. Siri is exception, even among peers. Amazon's Alexa can only speak English, Google's Assistant speaks English, and German on pixel phones, while Microsoft's Cortana has mastered eight languages in 13 different regions. So how does Siri do it?