As a voice assistant, ViVi can understand and respond in Vietnamese, search for information, perform certain commands such as calling or changing some settings in the car.
A short video of ViVi believed to be from the development team went viral on social media today. The Vietnamese voice assistant was tested on a VinFast car with a large central screen, but not similar to its current models which are for sales. The wake-up-word to call the assistant is Hey, VinFast, similar to other famous virtual assistants, such as Hey, Google or Hey, Siri (for Apple devices).
The man in the video tested many cases with ViVi, such as adjusting the air conditioner in the car, making phone calls, asking for information about the car, the weather, social knowledge, news about Covid-19 pandemic and even telling jokes. Notably, when the command has a natural meaning such as “too hot”, the system also understands and announces that it would set the aircon with lower temperature.
The voice of ViVi is considered to be easy listening and have a natural tone. However, these were just simple commands without high difficulty in context and were not tested on different regional accents.
According to a Vingroup representative, ViVi is a voice assistant developed by Vingroup Big Data Institute (VinBigdata). The product is expected to be integrated in VinFast cars in the near future. In addition, ViVi will be also applied to smart home systems and other technological product lines of the company.
The research team said that the accuracy rate for Vietnamese language recognition was almost 98% with common words. The error rate for speech recognition is less than or equal to 6% (for online) and 15% (for offline). ViVi supports over 100 features including information, facilities, entertainment as well as services and smart car control.
Similar to Google Assistant or Siri, Vingroup’s voice assistant also has the ability to personalize according to user preferences. The manufacturer believes that deep knowledge about the national and regional culture combining with strength in Vietnamese language recognition will be the advantages of ViVi compared to other products in the market. Not all famous virtual assistants in the world officially support Vietnamese. Previously, Google Assistant had tried to do it but soon after stopped and only opened for the Android TV operating system.
Prior to ViVi, another Vietnamese virtual assistant was introduced and also tested in cars. It is called Kiki. However, the virtual assistant developed by Zalo AI Lab has not been officially commercialized so far.
Source: VnExpress
