Beta testing of Yasmina, the human-like AI assistant, kicks off in Saudi Arabia

Yango, the company that transforms global technologies into everyday services for local enrichment, has announced that it is now possible to sign up for the public beta testing of its human-like AI assistant Yasmina.

The assistant is built and trained to understand various Arabic dialects and can respond in Khaleeji and English. Saudi residents are now welcome to enroll in the beta testing and be among the first to interact with Yasmina.

Yasmina has a unique capability to engage in authentic, consistent, and enjoyable conversations, making interactions feel remarkably natural and relatable. Yasmina knows local jokes, recognizes whether the user is male or female, and puts on only age-appropriate content when interacting with children.

Yasmina’s ability to maintain an engaging conversation is based on a large language model. Dozens of copywriters and hundreds of individual content contributors edited and perfected dialogs to fine-tune the model, allowing it to learn and grow into Yasmina’s unique Khaleeji personality.

Hundreds of local residents across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam, took part in training Yasmina’s speech recognition, so she can understand a wide variety of speech patterns, intonations, and dialects.

More than just an app on your phone, Yasmina can be built into other apps and smart home devices, making them friendlier and easier to use, ultimately bringing new user experiences.

Samer Mohamad, Yasmina Regional Director for MENA, Yango: “Our mission at Yango is to transform global technologies into everyday services for communities around the world. This is why we created an Arabic-speaking smart assistant that helps complete everyday chores more efficiently, fits perfectly in any GCC home, and can, among other things, inform users of prayer times. Right now, we’re fine-tuning Yasmina’s LLM to make the assistant even more fluent, creative, and emotionally intelligent.”