Bhashini, CRIS to build multilingual AI solutions for Indian Railways
The Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD) and the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) on Monday collaborated on the development and deployment of multilingual artificial intelligence solutions across key public-facing railway platforms.
The partnership aims to integrate Bhashini's state-of-the-art language technology stack, comprising Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Text Translation, Text-to-Speech (TTS), and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), into CRIS-managed systems such as the National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and RailMadad.
This will enable citizens to access critical railway services in 22 Indian languages.
'This collaboration will transform how millions of passengers engage with railway services daily. Through Bhashini's AI capabilities, we are ensuring that language is no longer a barrier to accessing vital public services,' said Amitabh Nag, CEO, Bhashini.
The partnership will also focus on co-developing chatbots and voice assistants for multilingual passenger support, developing multilingual over-the-counter interfaces for railway enquiry setups, scaling Bhashini-powered services through cloud and on-premise infrastructure, deploying these capabilities across websites, mobile apps, kiosks, and call centres, and enabling real-time, speech-based interaction in multiple Indian languages.
A series of joint technical workshops and pilot deployments are scheduled to commence in the coming months.
'CRIS is proud to partner with Bhashini to implement inclusive, AI-powered solutions across our digital platforms. This will enhance accessibility, transparency, and efficiency in our passenger-facing services,' said G.V.L. Satya Kumar, Managing Director, CRIS.
This MoU marks a major milestone under the vision of Digital India and further strengthens India's position as a global leader in language AI for public digital infrastructure, said Ministry of Electronics and IT.
Last month, India AI Mission, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), announced a collaboration with Intel India to advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities and skilling.
The collaboration will focus on key programmes including YuvaAI empowers (for school students); StartupAI (for startups); and IndiaAI Dialogues (for public sector leaders and policy practitioners). It will also enable Bhashini to scale to remote classrooms across India on AI.
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