[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] EduTech specialist Hodoo Labs announced on the 8th that it will hold an AI hackathon competition for developing a pronunciation symbol conversion model for children's English voice data in collaboration with AI startup Prediction.
The 'AI Hackathon,' with a total prize of 10 million KRW, is an AI-based STT (Speech-to-Text) model development competition that converts approximately 240,000 children's English voice data owned by Hodoo Labs into phonetic symbols. Selected outstanding participants will also receive employment benefits allowing immediate hiring at Hodoo Labs or Prediction. The competition, which accepts prediction results and model submissions until the 27th of this month, is open to any developers in the speech recognition field.
The company plans to use this competition as an opportunity to expand the speech recognition engine model, which has so far only utilized text conversion methods in the existing English learning sector, into the phonetic symbol domain, thereby establishing a more advanced learning system.
Kim Minwoo, CEO of Hodoo Labs, said, "This competition is the first collaboration between Hodoo Labs and Prediction, aiming to contribute to solving social polarization caused by unequal educational opportunities by bridging the educational gap through technology. As this opportunity is prepared with a good purpose, we ask for the interest of many high-quality, creative, and skilled speech recognition technology developers."
Hodoo Labs operates 'Hodoo English,' a children's English learning service based on AI and gamification. Recognized for its speech recognition technology optimized for non-English speaking children's voices, 'Hodoo English' was selected as a 'Baby Unicorn Company' by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in 2020. As of November last year, 'Hodoo English' had about 30,000 monthly users, recording a sixfold increase compared to the previous year.
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