Wednesday 8 February 2023

Arabic speech-to-text technology introduced in KSA

Source: Maqsam. Maqsam's exhibition booth at LEAP.

Maqsam, a MENA-based cloud communications company, is on track to disrupt Arabic-speaking customer engagement.

Founded by Fouad Jeryes and Sinan Taifour, Maqsam has developed generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of Arabic automatic speech recognition (ASR), also known as speech-to-text (STT). The company's language models have outperformed Google, Microsoft, and other regional competitors in the race to accurately transcribe the diverse Arabic dialects of the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region, Maqsam said.

Source: Maqsam. The first-of-its-kind STT solution was launched by Maqsam at LEAP 2023 in KSA.

Arabic has 422 million native speakers and around 1.5 billion total speakers globally, but is one of the most neglected languages when it comes to native deep tech offerings, Maqsam noted. Maqsam's technology can transcribe the different Arabic dialects spoken every day in MENA despite their varying orthographies, phonetics and phonological differences, reliably and cost-effectively. 

"Many years of experience went into achieving where we are today and yet this is the tip of the iceberg. Our competitive advantage lies within our proudly native and capable regional team of engineers, machine learning task force as well as mentors who are celebrated global leaders in this particular discipline. Our goal is one where we are helping enable the MENA region to unleash its true potential within a global revolution, rather than be an afterthought once more." said Taifour, CEO of Maqsam during their live showcase at the LEAP technology expo in Riyadh.

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