Samsung Galaxy AI for Multilingual and Cross-Cultural Communication
June 20, 2024As Samsung advances its premium mobile AI experiences, we explore Samsung Research centers worldwide to understand how Galaxy AI is empowering users globally. Now supporting 16 languages, Galaxy AI allows more people to enhance their language skills offline through features like Live Translate, Interpreter, Note Assist, and Browsing Assist. Our previous visit took us to China; this time, we journeyed to Brazil to see how teams collaborate across cultures and borders to expand Galaxy AI’s reach.
Bridging Language Barriers in Brazil
Brazil, a diverse nation of over 203 million people, uses Brazilian Portuguese as its official language, while 22 neighboring countries speak Latin American Spanish. Despite their widespread use, these languages have intricate regional variations. To tackle these challenges, the Samsung R&D Institute Brazil (SRBR) teamed up with Samsung experts from Mexico and third-party partners like SiDi and Sidia, forming a multidisciplinary team.
Improving AI-Language Understanding
The team used thousands of sources and a combination of machine learning and language processing tools to refine the AI model’s recognition of speech, texts, and regional variations. They faced challenges with local jargon and names of famous figures, which vary widely between regions. For example, “swimming pool” translates to “alberca” in Mexico, “pileta” in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and “piscina” in Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Brazil, with slight tonal differences. Overcoming these obstacles required building larger language models, refining processing tools, and collaborating across borders and time zones.
Collaborative Success
“We had to consider local slang and different ways of speaking before adapting and testing the model accordingly, which required close collaboration between the SRBR quality assurance (QA) team and development teams,” says Mateus Pedroso, Senior Manager and Head of Software Quality Lab at SRBR. The SRBR team coordinated with the QA team in Mexico and management in Korea, creating new communication channels and processes to align results and share progress.
Open Collaboration Philosophy
Samsung’s philosophy of open collaboration was evident in this project. The SRBR team collected and managed massive amounts of data, continually refining and improving audio and text sources. They defined key areas of responsibility to leverage collective skill sets across Latin American offices. The SRBR development team acted as the intermediate stakeholder, receiving directions from Samsung’s headquarters, developing updates, and testing various use cases.
Communication and Cultural Insight
“The testing phase required extensive communication and collaboration with QA teams to optimize the user experience, and each adjustment needed further testing and review,” says Leandro Flores de Moura, Software Development Manager at SiDi. Nathan Castro, QA Test Developer at SiDi, adds, “The success of Galaxy AI’s language capabilities is built on communication and collaboration as much as it is on technical expertise.”
Cultural Significance
The Galaxy AI project was not just about language; it was a cultural guide providing insight into people’s heritage and identity. “For SiDi’s QA team, this was an endeavor that will change the world by enabling cultures to come together and overcome the difficulty of communicating in different languages,” says Estefanía Castro Suárez, Test Developer at SiDi.
“The way the SRBR team collaborated exemplifies what Galaxy AI sets out to achieve—making the world a smaller place through communicating, sharing, and interacting with people, even those who speak different languages,” concludes Pedroso. This capability will continue to grow as more languages are added to Galaxy AI.
