From Hindi to regional accents: This new AI model is built to understand 26 Indian languages

India’s relationship with technology is increasingly shaped by how people speak, rather than just how they type. With users communicating across multiple languages, scripts, and regional accents, building AI that accurately understands spoken Indian languages remains a major challenge.

For you as a user, this matters because voice-based tools are only as useful as their ability to understand how people actually speak. An AI system designed around India’s linguistic diversity could make voice technology more accessible across the country.

A voice-first approach for India

Mitesh Khapra, Associate Professor at IIT Madras, with AI4Bharat and Bodhan AI, has introduced Indic-Transcribe, an AI transcription model designed to understand spoken Indian languages and accents.

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Khapra shared an X post where he describes India as a “voice-first nation”, pointing to the country’s countless languages, scripts and accents. The idea behind Indic-Transcribe is to build a system that reflects how Indians actually communicate instead of relying on models designed primarily around a limited set of languages or speech patterns.

26 Indian languages plus English

Indic-Transcribe supports 26 languages along with English. The model has 1.2 billion parameters, giving it a substantial scale for a speech-to-text system focused on India's diverse linguistic landscape.

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The wide language coverage is particularly relevant if you regularly switch between languages while speaking or use regional languages for everyday communication. Different pronunciations, accents and speech patterns can make transcription difficult, making language-specific AI models important for improving accuracy.

Rather than treating India's linguistic diversity as an edge case, Indic-Transcribe is positioned as a system built around it.

Where can you try Indic-Transcribe?

Indic-Transcribe is scheduled to go live on September 5, 2026, marking a collaborative effort between BodhanAI and AI4Bharat to advance voice technology tailored to India's diverse spoken communications.

Users will be able to test and access the model directly via Bodhan.AI.

Ultimately, this development holds broader implications for enhancing transcription, accessibility, voice assistants, and various AI tools relying on precise recognition of Indian speech.