Meralion, a Singapore-made AI model that is “empathetic” to users’ emotions and can adapt to the colloquial expressions of Southeast Asian users, could be integrated into Microsoft 365 productivity software as well as the company’s Copilot AI assistant.
Singapore’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) yesterday inked a deal with Microsoft to make use of the technology giant’s Azure cloud services to develop the AI model and work towards integrating it in Microsoft products.
With the first such AI tools appearing within six months, millions of Southeast Asian users could be more easily understood when they interact with an AI agent, say, on their PC in future.
The AI model, called Meralion or Multimodal Empathetic Reasoning and Learning in One Network, is based on an earlier Southeast Asian-centric large language model (LLM) that Singapore researchers have been working on.
Last year, the Singapore government said it was investing S$70 million to develop an LLM that provided Southeast Asian context to better cater to users in the region.
This South-east Asian Languages in One Network (Sea-Lion) model was trained on 11 languages, including English, Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese.
The new Meralion AI model is built on this earlier work and it incorporates multimodal input, which includes not just text but also speech, images and videos.
Speaking at a Microsoft industry event yesterday, Minister for Digital Development and Information, Josephine Teo, said models such as Meralion would better serve users in Southeast Asia.
She also pointed to the Singapore-made AI model’s responsiveness to a user’s emotions, based on its interactions with a human.
“The investigators told me that it is beginning to show signs of being able to discern emotions, such as if we sound irritated,” she noted.
“It’s often that customers are irritated when they call customer service,” she added. “The model is able to pick up signals like that and respond appropriately.”
UPDATE at 14/03/2025, 11:04am: The story has been updated to include the timeframe for the first availability of Meralion within Microsoft products, after it responded to queries with more details of the rollout.
