New AI Assistant Silvia Debuts to Tackle Spanglish (And Future Multilingual Combinations)

A new AI assistant named Silvia has emerged, designed to tackle the challenge of understanding "Spanglish," a blend of Spanish and English, with plans to support more language combinations in the future. This innovative app was created in just a month by Mansidak Singh, a founding product engineer at re:collect AI, after realizing that current AI assistants struggle with bilingual conversations.

Singh was inspired to develop Silvia after a conversation with an Argentinian woman, who expressed frustration over her iPhone's inability to handle a mix of Spanish and English in the same sentence. This sparked the idea for an assistant that could fluidly interpret and transcribe multilingual speech.

Silvia integrates seamlessly with the user's keyboard, allowing them to dictate in a mix of languages.

Initially, it supports only Spanish and English, with plans to add French, Romanian, Ukrainian, German, and Dutch soon. The app operates without storing any data, ensuring user privacy, and has been approved by Apple.

Singh built Silvia using iOS 18’s new Translation API to create dual channels for Spanish and English, combined with OpenAI Whisper for enhanced processing speed. Although the app currently focuses on Germanic languages using the Roman alphabet, Singh hinted at potential expansion in the future.

Unlike many AI products, Silvia doesn’t aim to revolutionize the world, but simply to better reflect the multilingual reality of its users. The app will be available for download at the end of the month, with a sign-up option for those who want to be notified when it's released.

Source: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch