Amazon is collaborating with IIT Bombay to advance research within speech, language, and multimodal AI. The Amazon- IIT Bombay artificial intelligence / machine learning initiative is a multi-year tie up that will fund research projects, PhD fellowships, and community events.
“Amazon’s growing research and development operations in India have powered engagement with Alexa users in Hindi and Indic languages, and their AI/ML innovations have delivered increasingly delightful shopping experiences,” said Rohit Prasad, Senior Vice President and head scientist at Alexa.
Amazon presently serves about 600 million people in India. It’s research centre in Bengaluru helps solve conversational AI challenges stemming from India’s diversity—22 official languages with over 19,500 dialects.
"This investment at one of the world's premier academic institutions will bring together Amazon scientists and IIT Bombay students and faculty, leveraging India's multilinguality as a learning lab, to develop new AI systems that can learn and adapt to different languages, accents and dialects. These efforts will help advance the technology fundamental to the future of conversational AI,” says Prasad.
Asia’s largest computer science department
IIT Bombay ranks among the top engineering institutes in India and is known for producing cutting-edge research in AI/ML. With 45 full-time faculty members, its computer science and engineering department is one of the largest in the subcontinent.
This collaboration will foster innovation in three ways: through community projects, research projects, and fellowships.
“This collaboration will foster innovation in three ways: through community projects, research projects, and fellowships, which will indeed spur development in AI and ML domains, as well as other areas, as the relationship progresses,” said Milind Atrey, IIT Bombay’s dean of Research and Development.
Amazon Research Awards program
Amazon and IIT Bombay have existing ties through the Amazon Research Awards program. The most recent award was granted in 2022 to Preethi Jyothi, associate professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Bombay, for her work on fairness in speech recognition.
Our top research minds have always attracted the attention of companies interested in scientific study.
“Our top research minds have always attracted the attention of companies interested in scientific study. With industry collaborators like Amazon who have a deep sense of technology and global reach, we hope to be able to expedite the deployment of technologies/products in the field of AI/ML,” says Subhasis Chaudhuri, director at IIT Bombay.
