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Why is a state bank teaching AI to speak local languages?

16 Jul4 min read· 📷 Justin Coonan

Punjab National Bank has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Digital India BHASHINI Division. The partnership aims to build advanced, multilingual artificial intelligence systems to make banking accessible to rural Indians in their native languages.

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⏳ Time Machine

How today’s news fits into the bigger picture

  1. 10 years ago

    Back in 2016, digital banking was entirely text-based, and voice-assisted banking was considered an expensive science-fiction concept.

  2. Last year

    In July 2025, BHASHINI expanded its voice database to include over 100,000 hours of spoken regional dialects.

  3. Last month

    In June 2026, the government urged public sector banks to adopt native language technologies to prevent digital exclusion.

  4. Yesterday

    Technical teams from PNB and BHASHINI finalized the data-sharing protocols for the AI models.

  5. Today

    PNB signs an agreement on Wednesday to build multilingual AI voice-banking tools with DIBD.

  6. What happens next?

    The bank aims to support completely hands-free, voice-activated loan applications for farmers by early 2027.

On Wednesday, Punjab National Bank partnered with the Digital India BHASHINI Division to bring multilingual artificial intelligence to the masses. The collaboration focuses on integrating voice-based AI tools into PNB's mobile banking applications, allowing users to check balances, transfer funds, and apply for loans using spoken local languages. By utilizing Bhashini's open-source translation engines, the state-run bank aims to break down the language barriers that exclude millions of non-English speaking rural Indians from digital banking. This initiative leverages advanced natural language processing models trained specifically on diverse Indian dialects. As banking services shift online, this AI deployment represents a massive step toward absolute financial inclusion, ensuring that a simple voice command in Hindi, Tamil, or Bengali can execute complex financial transactions safely.

💭 If you're wondering…

It is India's national AI-led language translation mission designed to break down language barriers by building open-source datasets and translation tools for Indian languages.

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