Revolutionizing Speech AI: Omnilingual ASR for 1600+ Languages

Omnilingual ASR: Open-Source Multilingual Speech Recognition for 1600+ Languages Core Question: How Can Speech Recognition Technology Cover Thousands of Languages Globally? Speech recognition technology is transforming human-computer interaction, yet most of the world’s 7,000 languages remain excluded from technological coverage. The Omnilingual ASR project addresses this challenge through an open-source approach that supports over 1,600 languages—including hundreds never previously covered by any ASR technology. The most revolutionary aspect of this system is its ability to add new languages with just a few paired examples, without requiring specialized expertise or large datasets. By combining scalable zero-shot learning with a flexible model …