Overview

• The upgraded Meralion model now handles Malay, Tamil, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia and Vietnamese in addition to English, Mandarin and Singlish, enabling seamless code-switching interactions.
• New emotion recognition capabilities allow the chatbot to detect volume, tone and sentiment, flagging seniors’ calls that indicate distress for human follow-up.
• A 12-member Meralion Consortium, including DBS Bank, the Ministry of Health and ST Engineering, was formed to tailor the AI for sectors such as eldercare, customer support and scam call screening.
• The project is backed by a $70 million investment from the National Research Foundation and IMDA, building on more than 90,000 downloads of the open-source model since December 2024.
• Digital Development Minister Josephine Teo outlined a sector-specific regulatory framework and urged workers to acquire basic AI skills to stay relevant.