The Indian IT Ministry aims to develop an AI-powered voice bot similar to Siri and Cortana for the Umang e-governance app. The officials seek to expand the reach of Umang’s services beyond the urban populace and aim to extend its benefits to a wider base of users who live in rural areas via the app’s voice capabilities and regional language support. The IT Ministry’s National e-Governance Division (NeGD) is set to meet technology vendors on October 4th to discuss the idea of creating the AI assistant which can converse in regional languages and help people easily avail services such as utility bill payment, filing income tax, checking fund details and a lot more. An agenda of the session scheduled for October 4 states that voice-based interactions enhance the user experience and also amplify an app’s usability and reach, which is something NeGD has on its mind. The government officials want to leverage the multilingual voice cap...