Vietnamese engineer and his 4-month journey to perfect AI on the most modern phone

At a working session with Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung on the afternoon of April 4, General Director of Samsung Vietnam Complex Choi Joo Ho revealed that the Galaxy S24 for the first time integrates artificial intelligence (AI) features proactively researched and developed by Vietnamese engineers.

On April 10, we had a conversation with this group of Vietnamese engineers. Proud to be the head of the Language AI research team, engineer Tran Tuan Minh, Samsung Vietnam Research and Development Center, said that in October 2023, the group's leaders decided to add Vietnamese to Galaxy AI, the 13th language after popular languages in the world such as English, Chinese, French, Korean, etc.

*Engineer Tran Tuan Minh recounts the journey of perfecting AI on the most modern phones. Photo: N. Huyen*

“I still remember the feeling of joy when I was selected for the AI team. Because this was the first time Samsung Research and Development Center Vietnam (SRV) received a strategic project related to AI.

Even more special, I feel extremely proud to develop Vietnamese, the mother tongue of my country, on the most modern phone line today," Minh said with a smile.

Immediately after that, engineers in the AI research and development team were sent to Korea and India to receive the transfer of AI model architecture, AI algorithms, AI training, AI data, etc. The AI testing department was also directly sent from Korea to share: AI knowledge, testing methods, testing support tools, AI testing experience.

Millions of voice files recorded, hundreds of people processing the data

However, when starting to implement the research, the research team also faced many difficulties. Accordingly, to develop high-quality AI, large, diverse and controlled data sources are prerequisites. However, compared to data from popular languages in the world such as English, Chinese, etc., Vietnamese data sources are much less.

“This is the biggest challenge we face. In addition to the difficult Vietnamese grammar structure, we also face challenges such as regional languages, slang, synonyms, borrowed words and new words from the GenZ generation…

To solve these problems, SRV must mobilize hundreds of people to process data for AI. We must continuously generate data to train AI, help AI understand and give accurate output results. In particular, these data sources must ensure legality and not simply freely collected data," Tuan Minh said.

Thanks to high concentration and mobilizing large resources for the project, in a very short time, the Vietnamese engineering team has both edited existing data and created new data to serve AI training.

Tuan Minh revealed that to perfect AI, the engineering team had to record millions of voice files of both men and women to help the Galaxy S24 Series be smarter for Vietnamese people.

Regarding testing, to ensure accurate translation and voice recognition in different noise environments, the engineering team not only performed testing in a lab environment, but also went to many locations such as Hoan Kiem Lake, shopping malls, and cafes so that the AI feature could work well in a real user environment.

“Thanks to their tireless efforts, in just 4 months, from zero, SRV engineers have mastered the technology and perfected AI for Vietnamese for the S24 product line,” Tran Tuan Minh proudly said.

*Mr. Do Duc Dung: "Galaxy AI is not the first global project that Vietnamese engineers have participated in." Photo: N. Huyen*

It is known that AI has been applied by Vietnamese engineers in voice recognition and voice to text conversion. Accordingly, the Galaxy AI device automatically recognizes the language the user is using through automatic voice recognition, then the voice content (Speech) will be converted to text (Text). In addition, AI can be used to convert text (Text) to voice. The input is text (translated), the output is the sound read from that text.

In parallel, the contribution of the Vietnamese engineering team to the AI feature in the Vietnamese language section is also to develop and perfect many smart features in the photo editing software on mobile phones (Photo Editor) such as: moving objects to another position in the photo. The device will automatically analyze, delete, reposition objects in the image, and recreate the missing part of the image after deleting the object.

Image Enlargement: The device will reproduce the image when resizing, aligning the layout, the missing background parts will be filled perfectly, and even the content will extend beyond the borders of the original image, expanding the visible area of the image. Image Resolution Enhancement: Helps to improve the resolution of the image without losing quality.

Sharing more, Mr. Do Duc Dung, Director of SRV Software Development Department, said that Galaxy AI is not the first global project that Vietnamese engineers have participated in. This shows the continuous growth of Samsung Vietnam Research and Development Center.

Every year, SRV receives technology transfers from other Samsung R&D centers around the world as well as from Korea for each area of responsibility. And since last year, by transferring AI - the most advanced and important technology of the group to Vietnam, Samsung has kept its promise to the Vietnamese Government when it determined to make Vietnam go beyond its role as a production base to become a strategic R&D base of Samsung globally.

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