Council AI helper struggling to grasp local dialect

A council has acknowledged its digital AI assistant has room to improve after it struggled to understand the Derbyshire dialect.

BBC Radio Derby called the authority's AI helper, Darcie - who is the public's first contact for help when calling Derby City Council or visiting its website - after it received an upgrade.

The station's breakfast show presenter, Becky Measures, who has a strong Derbyshire accent, was misunderstood by Darcie on a number of occasions.

At a council cabinet meeting on Wednesday, city councillor Hardyal Dhindsa alluded to phrases that Darcie was struggling to pick up such as "mardy" (moaning) and "duck" (dear/love).

In a statement, Dhindsa said the council was continuing efforts to "teach Darcie to understand Derby phrases to further enhance its local understanding".

The council said it had made improvements to Darcie so it could answer more complicated questions.

The upgraded version of Darcie has "demonstrated its effectiveness by successfully answering 58% of calls," said Dhindsa.

During the council meeting, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said Dhindsa mentioned Darcie was becoming "much more human" and would improve further so it could respond better to people's enquiries and their turns of phrase.

"It still can be improved," said Dhindsa.

"As the Radio Derby reporter said, it didn't understand Derbyshire dialect so well. Well, it will learn to do that. Our expert IT people will work on doing that.

"It's learning every time it has an experience and is much more human.

"The council remains committed to providing comprehensive support, continuing to offer all other channels such as face-to-face interactions, human telephone support, and other accessible channels if Darcie cannot help or if the situation is inappropriate for digital assistance."

Dhindsa said the council was the "first in the country to implement such technology", and could now speak Arabic, Czech, Pashto, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Slovak, Somali, and Urdu as part of the upgrade.

BBC Radio Derby's Kacper Misiarz, who is fluent in Polish, described the Polish version of Darcie as a "near word-for-word translation of the English version".

He added it was not "flawless" and worked well for simple queries - if you had internet access.

He said many larger organisations did not offer voice assistant support in Polish, so gave credit to the local authority for "making Darcie more inclusive".

Follow BBC Derby on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected] or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.