By Marlon Madden
Barbadian households could soon be ditching virtual assistants Siri and Alexa and saying hello to a local smart assistant, Patsy.
Local tech officials are in the process of fine-tuning the artificial intelligence (AI) assistant which will be able to interpret human speech and provide responses to questions just like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
Patsy, whose development started just over three months ago and is being led by Caritech Solutions Inc, was a big hit with patrons at the 2023 Science and Technology Festival recently held on the grounds of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
Managing Director of Riveting Media Inc. Rivelino Simmons, who is involved in developing the AI assistant, told Barbados TODAY that officials from the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology (MIST) had asked that Patsy be showcased at the event which was attended by primary and secondary school students.
“We made sure to give answers for kids that weren’t adult answers and it took its own legs from there. The kids love it,” Simmons said about the web-based AI that is positioned in front of a backdrop of the Parliament buildings.
He added that Patsy is being developed to make her much faster and ensure that she is able to answer just about any question posed.
“We still have a bit more coding to do but it’s fully functional. She understands her name and she answers all your questions.
“We are going to have to work on the accent. She has a little foreign accent right now, but we can work on the Bajan side of Patsy. Anything is possible with artificial intelligence,” Simmons quipped.
He also told Barbados TODAY that Patsy’s creation was a testament to the immense talent on the island, saying it indicated that Barbados can produce technology-based solutions for the rest of the world to consume.
“Because we are developing AI products and using the API [Application Programming Interface], it means we can technically start looking at problems and using artificial intelligence to solve them.
“We have good coders and programmers in Barbados; it is just pulling them together and using their skills. We can start creating products for people rather than sitting here and consuming everyone’s products. We have to start looking at that aspect of innovation,” he said.
Simmons was not in a position to say how soon Patsy would be available to the general population but he noted that once it becomes available it will be customisable.
“The good thing about this technology is that it is not a software that you install, it is a website. So it is accessible and schools can have it tomorrow once they put the policy in place for that,” he explains.
Innovation Officer with MIST Arlene Weekes told Barbados TODAY that Patsy’s creation was a major step for the local tech industry.
“It opens a whole new world for us here in Barbados because we need to stop the uptake and produce our own so that we can sell to the world. It will make a huge difference to Barbados,” she said.
“The Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology is tasked with the responsibility of digitising Barbados so I am sure that there are a lot of ways we will be able to use it [Patsy] in the future.”
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