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Teaching a robot Icelandic

An Icelandic collaboration combining the power of people and machines.

Summary

Meet AIME. Pronounced Amy.

She’s a talking AI robot, developed by our Netherlands-based firm.

When Deloitte Iceland introduced AIME at the country’s largest IT event, it became clear she lacked one essential skill: the ability to speak Icelandic.

So we joined forces with language experts, university students and local communities across the country on a project to bridge a gap in AI capability and give a nation a voice.

Teaching tech

When we realised that AIME needed help to speak Icelandic, we found the problem ran deeper than one robot. Speech recognition technology that understood the language was virtually non-existent.

So we teamed up with Almannarómur, a centre for language technology, and Reykjavik University. Their solution? Local residents would teach AIME their native tongue.

Hilma Jonsdottir, a manager in Growth, says, “In recent years, there has been a revolution in language technology and how we use our voices to control devices. The Icelandic language is in a precarious situation due to these rapid changes, so it was important to teach the technology to recognise it.”

The first step was to make sure AI software could understand everyone who spoke the language. So, with funding from the Icelandic Student Innovation fund, the Deloitte team hired university students to create a national online database – samromur.is. Icelandic people of all ages and genders and from all regions could voluntarily record and contribute their speech samples.

“This is a great example of how the public sector, universities and a private company can work together on something big.”

Maria Skuladottir

Brand, Marketing and Communications Director, Deloitte Iceland

Spreading the word

To generate more awareness and get the public involved in sharing their speech samples, Deloitte Iceland developed a marketing campaign with Almannarómur and Reykjavik University. Following this, Almannarómur and the university launched a reading competition for young people. Schools across Iceland took part to see which could add the most recordings to the database.

“The competition was a hit,” continues Hilma, “and it provided the bulk of the speech samples. It rallied local communities in a fun way, especially since everyone could participate on behalf of their school.

“What started as a technology project became a nationwide reading competition that encouraged children and teenagers to read out loud and contribute.”

Icelandic is one of the which is under threat in the digital world and is therefore at risk of dying out.

Icelandic is rare. Today, as little as 400,000 people speak it around the world. Historically, Icelandic is a western dialect of old Norse from Norway. The oldest preserved texts were written around 1100AD, the most famous being the Icelandic Sagas. And on the whole, not much has changed since those words were written down all those years ago.

So what does this mean when we translate this to modern speech technology and how we use voice to control devices?

Call home.

Call home.

Call home.

I am sorry,I don't understand this.

Linguists refer to it as ‘digital death’. If people cannot converse with the technology that is becoming
more and more common every day, then it could start eroding and undermining the need for their native tongue. Unless action is taken, Icelandic will end up in the Latin bin. So, we need to teach technology to understand Icelandic, and make Icelandic heard.

So, it all started when Deloitte Iceland showcased a robot from Deloitte Netherlands called Little Amy,
at Iceland’s largest IT event in 2018. Icelandic people came to the stand to interact with Little Amy, only to find out that she couldn’t speak Icelandic. Sadly, speech recognition technology that understood Icelandic was virtually non-existent.

So,how do we teach a robot such a rare language?

The first step in making Icelandic usable for modern technology was to ensure the robot could understand everyone speaking the language. The Icelandic government launched the Icelandic language technology initiative in 2018. The initiative is led by the non-profit Almannarómur, Iceland's Centre for Language Technology. So, we reached out to them to find out where to start.

We secured funding from the innovation Centre, to work with students to deliver the technical elements of the project. They developed an online database called Samrómur which aimed to collect Icelandic voice data which can be used to train voice recognition software, by recording people of all ages, genders and regions.

But,this wouldn't happen overnight, so we needed some help to spread the word. So, we financed and developed
a marketing campaign with Almannarómur and Reykjavik University to gain the public's awareness and ask for their participation. Later, Almannarómur and Reykjavik University launched a reading competition in primary schools to encourage participation.

It was a total hit. It spread out through the schools into other communities, drawing in a broader audience as they just rallied to support their schools.

This is an excellent example of how the public, NGOs, universities, and the private sector can work together
on something big. Since inception, the database has collected double the original expectation - becoming part of a bigger ongoing five year national language technology programme to help build speech recognition systems
in Icelandic.

It is a living project for the living, that shows how different parts of society can come together to help save that precious heritage.

A triumph for teamwork

The database contains more than two and half million voice samples from some 27,000 speakers – double the original goal – who have added their distinctive tones and dialects.

While there is still more mapping of the language to do, the database has become one of the foundations for building Icelandic speech recognition systems, such as screen readers for visually impaired people and live transcription services.

Maria Skuladottir, brand, marketing and communications director at Deloitte Iceland, says, “We are very proud of this project – of the impact it has had and the support it has received within our community. For the people of Iceland, it shows the great things that can be achieved when NGO’s, the public and private sectors, as well as local communities, work together.”

And AIME? The robot that kickstarted this adventure has found a forever home in Reykjavik University’s Language and Voice lab.