Key Takeaways
- A new AI, Meralion, understands English, Singlish, and several regional languages.
- It can detect emotions and tones, making interactions more natural.
- Meralion can be used to check on seniors and help block scam calls.
- Developed in Singapore, it aims to better serve local communication styles.
- The AI is available for public use and is part of a larger regional AI initiative.
Meet Meralion, a new artificial intelligence agent designed to understand not just English and local languages, but even Singlish. This AI can also pick up on non-verbal cues like a speaker’s volume, emotion, and tone.
Digital Development and Information Minister Josephine Teo shared this update on May 28 at the Asia Tech x Singapore conference. Meralion, short for Multimodal Empathetic Reasoning and Learning in One Network, can grasp at least eight regional languages including Mandarin, Tamil, Malay, and Thai.
Developed by A*Star’s Institute for Infocomm Research, Meralion is available for anyone to install and adapt for their own use, free of charge. Talks are already happening with a social service agency to put this chatbot to work.
Imagine Meralion helping social workers by calling seniors to remind them about their medication. The AI autonomously checks on their well-being, listening for sadness or anger that might need a human touch, and then creates a call summary.
Meralion’s creation is part of a $70 million project by the National Research Foundation and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). This initiative aims to build large language models tailored for Southeast Asia.
This funding also supports AI Singapore’s Sea-Lion model, trained on at least 11 major regional languages. According to The Straits Times, Dr Lawrence Wee from IMDA highlighted that Meralion fills a critical gap, as current AI systems are often trained on Western data and struggle with local dialects and communication styles.
Unlike many global AI giants that need extensive retraining for local use, Meralion is trained on the national speech corpus. This means it understands when people mix languages in a sentence, just like they naturally do in the region.
IMDA and A*Star also noted its ability to detect emotional tone, leading to more empathetic conversations. Future updates will even include understanding Chinese dialects.
Mrs Teo, who oversees Smart Nation and Cybersecurity, mentioned Meralion could serve over 450 million people in the region who use these languages.
A demonstration showed Meralion in an eldercare scenario. The AI bot asked a caller in Singlish how he was, understanding his reply about an early start: “I wake up at 6 and make my kopi-o.”
The bot compassionately responded in Singlish: “Aiyoh, so sayang… Hope your kopi-o helped. Have you eaten? Remember to take care of yourself, okay?” For more serious concerns like body aches, it can offer basic advice or flag urgent cases to social workers.
Axiom IT Solutions is developing new AI apps with Meralion and is in discussions with an unnamed social service agency to use it for eldercare.
In another demonstration, Meralion showcased its potential in fighting scams. It can screen suspicious calls, identify itself as an AI assistant, and ask the caller’s purpose before deciding to connect or block the call.
This clever AI can also block calls from other bots, which scammers often use for mass targeting. How clients will implement this technology is still unfolding, with possibilities including telcos offering it as a security service or as a call-filtering app.
An earlier version of Meralion has already seen over 90,000 downloads since its open-source release in December 2024, by users ranging from start-ups to research labs.
Mrs Teo emphasized that Meralion’s ability to understand sentences with mixed languages is crucial for multicultural societies. “It’s very unusual for us to complete a whole sentence using just one language,” she noted, pointing to over 1,200 languages and dialects in Southeast Asia.
Meralion builds on the success of Sea-Lion, another locally-focused language model, which has been installed over 200,000 times, signaling strong demand for AI that understands regional nuances.
The ATxSG conference, organized by IMDA, hosted around 3,500 global attendees for discussions on AI governance and tech innovation, with executives from major companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google participating.
Mrs Teo also announced the Meralion Consortium, a group of 12 organizations including DBS Bank, the Ministry of Health’s Office for Healthcare Transformation, and ST Engineering.
This consortium will collaborate with Meralion’s developers to refine the AI for use by member companies and their sectors, focusing on multilingual customer support, emotional analysis for well-being, and improving decision-making by considering cultural contexts.
Microsoft, a consortium member, is exploring how to integrate Meralion into its office tools. SPH Media, publisher of The Straits Times, is also looking into using Meralion for AI apps in user experience and customer service.
