India is a country of many languages—a patchwork of dialects, cultures, and practices that have passed through the centuries. There are more than 1600 languages spoken across the country, each representing a different cultural identity, history, and community to which it belongs.

Language in India is much more than an instrument of communication; it holds significant value on the platform of cultural heritage, continuity between generations, and individual or profound communal identification.

However, as we dive into the digital age, this multilingualism faces new challenges. A few globally dominant major languages in technology or media tend to make many Indian languages irrelevant, especially those spoken by smaller groups within society. This is not about losing just languages but eroding one's culture, knowledge base, and heritage.

The development of Indian text-to-speech (TTS) technology in this context is both a technical challenge and a cultural necessity. The Indic TTS can save and renew India’s language variety, making all languages possible on the digital platform, where no voice will go unheard.

Language is the heartbeat of culture.

There is so much more to what we say than just our words; it tells us who we are. The way one speaks in India can show one's true self, from the punctuation of sentences to word formations and even slight differences in pronunciation that may indicate where one comes from, one's family background, or the type of people one relates to. For instance, a ‘hello’ can speak volumes about our background and community. In a place like Delhi, these linguistic nuances are striking; while some say'majjā', others say 'mazzā', and what might be 'Zafar' to one could be 'Jafar' to another, each variation is a clue to the speaker's roots. Beyond words, the very tone and manner of speech can indicate whether someone is educated or uneducated, affluent or struggling, from the historic quarters of old Delhi to the newer developments. Even the choice between 'skul' and 'sakul' for 'school' becomes a marker of identity, weaving together the social and cultural distinctions in this linguistically diverse country.

For example, take Marathi. A language spoken by millions of people in Maharashtra. The way the language is spoken in Pune—a major urban center—varies greatly from its usage in Kolhapur, which is a small city primarily depending on agriculture. Thus, such variations are not confined to language but also encompass lifestyle, values, and history among residents of the two areas. To accurately replicate this transformative nature of language, a TTS for India must be trained through an all-inclusive dataset that involves dialects from different regions and other variables like pronunciation patterns or accents as well. So that the technology does not confine itself to enabling digital accessibility of languages only but rather extends to ensuring digital representation remains authentic.

In addition, language serves as a vital chain between generations. Language is the medium through which traditions are passed on, wisdom is shared amongst elders, and values and stories of their culture are taught to children. The young ones today, who have become more connected through digital media, face a potential risk of losing their linguistic heritage if their mother tongues do not get sufficient representation in the digital space. Developing TTS that works for all Indian languages could help bridge this gap and enable young people to relate to their roots in modern ways that mean something even now.

‍The Place of TTS in Social Inclusion and Economic Empowerment

TTS technology, however, does more than preserve cultures. It is transforming by promoting social inclusion and economic empowerment. It can be a game-changer in a nation where literacy levels are dispersed unevenly and millions of people are illiterate or semi-literate. TTS could offer these populations auditory information and access to essential services in their native tongue, thus breaking the barriers that text-based digital content often poses.

Imagine a farmer living in an isolated village in Uttar Pradesh who speaks only Awadhi, understanding crucial agricultural information that is available only in English through TTS. Another could be the case of a senior citizen in Tamil Nadu who has limited reading proficiency in Hindi; the content he consumes can be turned into spoken Tamil via TTS, making it easier for them to be informed and connected. Access improvement, digital inclusion, and bettering lives are just some of the things an inclusive Indic TTS could bring.

Besides being just social, TTS has far-reaching economic implications. By enabling businesses to communicate using local languages, TTS opens up new markets, including increasing personalization with consumers. For example, banks, e-commerce platforms, and customer care centers, among others, can use language-to-speech technology (TSS) to offer services in local languages, thereby improving user satisfaction and knowledge about customers.

Navigating India’s Complex Linguistic Terrain

There is a popular aphorism that depicts India’s linguistic diversity rather well:

‍Kos-kos par badle paani, chaar kos par baani (the language spoken in India changes every few kilometers, just like the taste of the water). India has 30 languages that are spoken by more than a million people each. These 30 languages by themselves only provide a linguistic window through which we can view the 122 languages that are spoken by at least 10,000 people each. Then we have the 1600 languages, most of them dialects, restricted to specific regions, many of them on the verge of extinction.

- Hari Narayan, The Hindu (India, a land of many tongues)

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The complexity of the Indian languages makes it difficult to develop Indic TTS. All 1600 of these languages have their own scripts, grammar, and phonetic rules, while some have multiple dialects that significantly vary from one region to another. However, this type of diversity poses two challenges for TTS technology developers. They have to create systems that are not only accurate but also culturally and contextually relevant. i.e., taking into account "Bhasha" and "Boli" (language and spoken tongue).

For example, there are particular challenges in TTS development for Tamil, a language with a rich literary history and spoken by millions. A TTS system representing Tamil’s complex script and its inflected grammar must be natural and have fluency in the output. Urban-rural pronunciation disparities between Tamil speakers should also be considered so that no user group feels alienated. This demands advanced NLP techniques and machine learning models capable of recognizing and adapting to such local variations.

An additional obstacle is the practice of code-mixing, extensively carried out in India, whereby individuals blend several languages within a single conversation. In many parts of India, it is common for sentences to effortlessly traverse between Hindi, English, and other regional tongues. Hence, developing TTS systems that can handle and produce output in code-mixed languages is crucial, as they reflect the way people speak. To this end, TTS systems must not only know multiple languages but also identify what occurs when they get mixed up in one moment during conversations, hence making them sound real and intuitive, as well as trying to mimic normal human speech patterns.

Innovating for India: Government, Industry, and Academia

The creation of Indian text-to-speech (TTS) technology is the result of the partnership of several stakeholders: government, industry, academia, and others. Different players also provide distinct inputs and collectively evolve the potential in this area, thus making it possible for the rich linguistic diversity of India to resonate in the online space.

Government Initiatives: Bhashini and MeitY's India AI Mission

In India, the government has played a pivotal role in promoting and advancing Indian TTS in systems like Bhashini and the larger India AI Mission. Bhashini, an initiative unveiled in 2022 Digital India Week, is a real-time translated language service formulated to aid in effective dialogue among the many languages present in the country. Toward this end, Bhashini is reliant on publicly sourced content through projects known as Suno India, Bolo India, Likho India, Dekho India, etc. These languages are made available from a standalone website and from mobile apps, thereby helping Bhashini’s vision of overcoming language barriers and enabling millions of Indians to use digital services in their preferred languages.

In harmony with other Indian technology efforts such as Bhashini, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has established another multi-emblem, broad-based initiative, the IndiaAI Mission, which has a budget worth 10,372 crores and intends to make India a foremost nation in the technology development of AI. This mission has been decomposed into areas of focus: AI education and research, mainly under programs like IndiaAI FutureSkills; and the building of AI infrastructures with supercomputing resources available to academia, start-up companies, and industry. Under this mission, MeitY has supported AI initiatives in more than 23 top Indian institutes, such as IITs, NITs, and universities, where students join as inventors, receiving generous grants for AI projects, which helps create a pool of specialists that will be able to produce AI solutions in India in the coming years.

‍Industry Contributions: Gan.AI

Gan. AI is one of the leaders in the development of conversational AI models, especially with the recently launched Myna-mini, a TTS research preview that supports 22 Indic languages together with English. This model is pivotal in making Indic language TTS digitally accessible in India. Gan.AI’s focus on advanced features like cross-lingual voice cloning is setting new standards for TTS technology in India.

‍Academic and Research Contributions: AI4Bharat and IIT Madras

AI4 Bharat, located within IIT Madras, is instrumental in advancing the Indic TTS initiative. Since its inception in 2019, AI4Bharat has promoted the building of open-source tools, datasets, and models for Indian languages. They deal with overcoming some of the major issues, such as linguistic diversity, data availability, or the cultural relevance of artificially developed intelligence in an Indian context. One of the most effective outcomes of their work is their partnership with the Government of India in translating required government documents into various Indian languages.

Also, IIT Madras, through its Center for Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, engages in research that is responsive to such features of Indian languages as tone and code-mixing. Another important institution, CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), is also involved and contributes to the development of TTS technologies as part of its mission to provide multilingual and multiscript solutions for all communities in India.

International Collaboration

There is also a need for very international collaboration. Organizations such as Mozilla, through their Common Voice project, have been able to collect a lot of voice data in Indian languages, which is important for creating precise and effective TTS models. 

Overall, the combination of these activities from the government, industry, academia, and international partners is not only safeguarding India’s rich linguistic diversity, but they are also making sure it flourishes in the present day and age. All these players, by combining cutting-edge technology and genuine appreciation of the unique linguistic culture of India, are building the architecture for a future where interactions in Indian cyberspace are as colorful and diverse as India itself.

‍Use Cases: How TTS is Shaping Lives in India

Indic TTS’s applications are manifold. These range from profound impacts on daily life to affecting the working environment of people with disabilities and those who cannot read or write. People with these conditions use TTS as a link to access information they would not have otherwise accessed. This assists them in navigating digital platforms, interacting with content, and reaching out for essential services using their mother tongues.

In industries, the commercialization of TTS has significantly changed how businesses interact with customers. Customer engagement and satisfaction are enhanced through personalized voice interactions in native languages. Sectors like banking and e-commerce, which depend on simplicity and accessibility, derive the greatest benefit from this intervention.

Alternatively, endangered languages can stay relevant by being brought into contemporary communication channels through TTS, which is important for their preservation since it will ensure that future generations can communicate in such languages too.

‍Cognitive Impact: Language and Information Processing

Language has an essential and prominent place in information processing, and this can be especially true in crisis communication. Studies show that information that is offered to people in a language they know is more effective in achieving its objective and facilitating action as expected. TTS technology can be used to overcome this challenge and improve communication efficacy so that the intended messages are delivered in a language that is most appropriate to the audience in general, whether during crises or normal life.

One can hardly overstate the convenience and, thus, psychological comfort of receiving information in one’s native tongue. Situations where the distinction between communication and action is critical, such as natural disasters or even public health emergencies, tend to have zero tolerance for problems in comprehension of the given information. Due to TTS, the issue of literacy or knowledge of the appropriate language is dealt with in such a manner that all populations can receive and understand the message, even when it is critical.

Digitizing Dialects and Leveling the Field

Creating Indic TTS systems solves not only a technological problem but also a societal one. It is important for conserving the linguistic diversity of India, fostering social integration, and making it possible for everybody to have a voice in the Internet era.

At Gan.AI, we are determined to make strides in the conversational AI space and extend the rich exploration of language technologies. We welcome collaboration in all forms, including government, industry, research organizations, and civil society, to engage in the development of Indic TTS technology. This is more than a challenge; it is an opportunity—a promise to build a digital future that is as rich and colorful as the people and languages of our country.