The roaring success of ChatGTP has led to many big companies integrating the technology to their platform. After Microsoft and Google, it seems that WhatsApp will be the next big platform to see this integration in India. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) Indian Ministry of IT is reportedly working on a chatbot powered by ChatGPT to provide information to citizens through WhatsApp.
According to a report by The Indian Express, the chatbot is being developed by the Bhashini team. The chatbot will allow users to ask questions through voice notes and receive voice responses in return. Currently, the chatbot supports 12 languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, and English.
As per the report, the new AI-backed chatbot is designed to help rural populations who depend heavily on government schemes and can use it to ask questions about various programs and services relevant to them.
The chatbot aims to provide citizens with quick and accurate information about government schemes and initiatives, however, there are also concerns about the potential for misinformation being disseminated through the chatbot as ChatGPT does not have access to latest data. The Bhashini team is yet to commit to a public release date for the chatbot.
The report also highlights the limitations of the WhatsApp bot at its current stage of development. The AI bot reportedly responds to only simple queries. The accuracy of answers is also another major concern.
ChatGTP is trained on vast amount of textual data but it only understands English currently. To make the Bhashini’s AI bot available to a wider audience, the government will train the chatbot on various Indian languages. This is basically to disintegrate the language barrier for users who may not be proficient in English.
The government is leveraging the contributions of the Bhasha Daan portal to create a large repository of voices in various Indian languages. Additionally, the team is using the vast database of languages that Doordarshan- the national broadcaster in India, telecasts.