Overview

• The upgraded Meralion now supports Malay, Tamil, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia and Vietnamese alongside English, Mandarin and Singlish.
• New emotion-recognition capabilities enable the chatbot to detect tone, volume and non-verbal cues for empathetic eldercare check-ins and to screen and intercept scam calls.
• A 12-member Meralion Consortium featuring DBS Bank, the Ministry of Health and ST Engineering will refine the model for industry uses such as customer service and social work.
• This release builds on a S$70 million initiative funded by the National Research Foundation and IMDA to develop large language models tailored to Southeast Asia.
• Minister Josephine Teo outlined a targeted AI regulatory framework and urged workers to acquire basic AI skills to stay relevant in the evolving workplace.