The idea to protect the Prizren\u2013Timok dialect from being forgotten with the help of artificial intelligence came from Milena \u0160ovi\u0107, an AI engineer who has been living in the United States for nine years. She came from Chicago to Serbia to present her project at the International two-day conference \u201cArtificial Intelligence,\u201d held at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Milena emphasized, her idea has existed for 30 years\u2014to standardize and digitalize the Prizren\u2013Timok dialect, which she uses as a native of Ni\u0161, so that this dialect could become more widely represented in speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Milena came up with a chatbot that uses southern Serbian speech in its interactions. The \u201cLeskovac chatbot\u201d is not yet available to the general public, and its \u201cpremiere\u201d will take place on October 9 at the conference at SANU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I started working in artificial intelligence, I realized it\u2019s a technology that can help us,\u201d Milena said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A dictionary and grammar guide are being prepared to assist the chatbot in the Leskovac dialect<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA detailed dictionary and grammar guide are currently being developed, which will be available online and completely free. If you type a word in standard Serbian, you\u2019ll get the corresponding word from the dialect. This dictionary will be used for further chatbot training,\u201d Milena explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a basis for the dialect, she used short stories and anecdotes written by native speakers and prepared a set of basic grammatical rules to ensure the model consistently follows dialect patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese short stories and anecdotes were written by people from Leskovac and are completely authentic. I created the grammar myself\u2014it was difficult because I\u2019m not a linguist, I\u2019m an engineer. It was a challenge, and I needed help from the people of Leskovac. Each chatbot was manually validated,\u201d Milena said, adding:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What will the online dictionary look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI already have experience creating dictionaries, since I\u2019m the author of the first Serbian-English mathematical dictionary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first chatbot she created was dedicated to Nikola Tesla, and it has already been used in classes at several elementary and high schools, as well as becoming part of the permanent exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also created a chatbot dedicated to Branislav Nu\u0161i\u0107, which communicates exclusively in Serbian and is designed to faithfully reflect the writing style of the famous satirist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese chatbots are only part of a larger project, as the idea is to create chatbots for all famous figures from our region, which will be very helpful for children in school,\u201d said Milena \u0160ovi\u0107.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She emphasized that in the United States, chatbots are widely used not only in everyday life but even more in business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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