Singlish-savvy Singapore AI chatbot can check in on seniors, intercept scam calls

The Star

28-05-2025

SINGAPORE: Artificial intelligence agents trained to speak in English, local mother-tongue languages and even Singlish may soon be deployed to call elderly patients or seniors to check in on how them are doing, or in anti-scam centres to intercept suspicious calls.
'I've been told (the chatbot) can also handle non-verbal cues such as the speaker's volume, emotion, tone,' said Digital Development and Information Minister Josephine Teo, unveiling the chatbot on Wednesday (May 28) at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference.
Called Meralion (short for Multimodal Empathetic Reasoning and Learning in One Network), the chatbot can understand at least eight regional languages such as English, Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, Thai and Singlish - Singapore's unique take on English which fuses regional languages.
Meralion, which is developed by A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), is available for the public to install for free to adapt for their uses. Its developers are also in talks with a social service agency to deploy the chatbot, and are refining the program for use in scam detection.
For instance, Meralion can help social workers ring seniors to remind them to take their medication. The AI program, which works autonomously, can also check in on the seniors' well-being, analysing their tone and dialogue for signs of sadness or anger that might require closer attention from human staff members. The chatbot will generate a summary of the call, detailing the senior's needs and well-being.
Meralion's development is part of a S$70 million initiative funded by the National Research Foundation and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), which aims to build large language models tailored for the region.
The fund has also backed AI Singapore's Sea-Lion (South-east Asian Languages in One Network) model, which is trained on at least 11 major languages used in the region.
The Meralion chatbot fills a gap for locally-attuned language models as most current AI systems are trained largely on Western data, said Dr Lawrence Wee, director of business and ecosystems at IMDA's BizTech Group.
As a result, chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini that dominate the fast-growing AI field can often stumble over local dialects, communication styles and nuances, so deploying them here often requires extensive retraining on regional data.
Meralion, trained on the national speech corpus, understands when multiple languages are spoken in the same sentence, reflecting how people in the region naturally communicate.
Meralion can also detect emotional tone to enable more empathetic interactions with the chatbot, said IMDA and A*Star. They added that Meralion is being trained to understand Chinese dialects in future updates.
Teo, who is Minister-in-Charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity, said that the Meralion chatbot can serve the needs of more than 450 million people in the region who use these languages.
In a demonstration on May 26, the media was shown how Meralion can be deployed in eldercare and anti-scam efforts.
The social services AI bot asked the caller how he was feeling and understood his Singlish reply, which included a lament on his early start to the day: 'I wake up at 6 and make my kopi-o' (local black coffee).
The bot responded in Singlish: 'Aiyoh, so sayang... Hope your kopi-o helped. Have you eaten? Remember to take care of yourself, okay?'
For more severe concerns such as body aches, the bot can give basic advice, such as to rest or ice bruises. Urgent cases can be flagged directly to social workers, depending on how the program is implemented.
Dr Wee said Meralion's developers are in talks with a social service agency, which it did not identify, to deploy the AI chatbot for eldercare.
In a separate demonstration, Meralion was used to screen likely scam calls to prevent scammers from reaching victims over the phone.
If a call seems suspicious, Meralion answers, identifies itself as an AI assistant and asks the caller to state their purpose. The bot assesses the purpose of the call before deciding whether to let the call through or to block it.
Meralion can also block calls made by bots, often used by scammers to target victims en masse.
It is yet to be seen how potential clients will implement the technology. Telcos might employ it to screen suspicious calls before they reach users who opt in for the security service, or as an app to filter calls, said Lam Pang Ngean, business development director at Axion IT Solutions, which is working with A*Star bring Meralion to potential clients.
An earlier version of Meralion has been downloaded more than 90,000 times by start-ups, research labs and academics, among other users, since it was rolled out as an open-source tool in December 2024.
'Furthermore, (Meralion's latest version) understands sentences containing a mix of languages, which is common in multi-cultural societies,' said Teo, speaking to several hundred tech policymakers, researchers and industry guests in attendance at Capella in Sentosa.
'It's very unusual for us to complete a whole sentence using just one language,' she said, adding that there were more than 1,200 languages and dialects in South-East Asia.
Meralion follows the footsteps of Sea-Lion, another large language model designed to reflect local cultures. The open-source Sea-Lion software has been installed more than 200,000 times, said Teo, adding that the interest in a regionally attuned model indicated a demand for a new AI program capable of understanding speech, text and other modes of communication.
Organised by IMDA, the ATxSG conference is expected to host 3,500 attendees from around the world who will attend panels and discussions on AI governance and innovation in the technology sector between May 27 and 29.
Executives from major tech companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are also scheduled to attend panel discussions that address pressing issues in tech.
Teo announced the Meralion Consortium, which launches with 12 member organisations including DBS Bank, the Ministry of Health and ST Engineering, to with Meralion's developers to refine the AI model so that they can be used by member companies and their sectors.
The consortium will focus on multilingual customer support, analysing speech and text for emotional cues to support wellbeing and care and to improve AI's decision-making ability by factoring cultural contexts.
The members include Microsoft, which is working with A*Star on how Meralion can be woven into its suite of office tools.
SPH Media, which runs The Straits Times, is also exploring ways to use Meralion to support AI apps in user experience and customer service tools, said chief operating officer Loh Yuh Yiing. - The Straits Times/ANN