Govt Working on Alexa, Google Assistant-like Chatbots to Deliver Public Services

The Indian government could be working on platforms similar to Alexa and Google Assistant to deliver e-governance services. As per reports, the Government on Friday invited bids to develop a voice assistant similar to Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.

As per the PTI report, the AI-based platforms will interact with the public in multiple languages. It is also expected to analyze sentiments and collect data to give personalized services to users. The report states that the National E-Governance Division of Ministry of Electronics and IT has invited proposals to build the conversational platform that can be deployed on the UMANG platform, which hosts various apps that provide government services to citizens.

“The platform should be able to provide assistance with general tasks, inclu

ding but not limited to availing services of government and available on the UMANG platform such as registration, login, reset the password, department service relation information, event, (and) new launch…etc,” the proposal document read. The chatbot is expected to turn speech into a textual input and turn text into speech

“Platforms should also have other deep learning capabilities, which can be used by platforms for discovery and recommendation of eligible schemes and services to the users of bots/applications. Users should be recommended best-fit schemes and services available in the government domain based on his/her profile,” the document obtained by PTI read. It would take the project four years to complete.

On another note, Amazon Alexa got a host of new features recently. Amazon rolled out a group voice and video calling feature on Alexa-enabled devices. If you have Echo devices including the Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show, you can host a group call by giving commands like “Alexa, call my college group”. Before giving a command like that, make sure that you have saved the group by the same name on the Alexa App. Users can add up to up to six participants including them.

The feature was first announced by Amazon in September but the Verge report suggests that it will be rolled out in countries including India, Austria, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the US, and the UK soon. This feature is particularly useful if you have a smart speaker with a display. As hosting a group video call would be much easier on it.

Source: IndiaToday