Kanari AI Launches Fenek AI, the First MENA-Focused Speech Recognition Solution for Dialectal Languages

Kanari AI, a dialectal speech technology solutions specialist, launched Fenek AI, the first MENA-focused automatic transcription, translation, and subtitling platform for dialectal languages. 

Fenek AI allows its users to transcribe audio and video files in Arabic and in English, edit and share their files in several formats, subtitle videos, and create workspaces on the platform to work with teams on several projects. With over 20 countries in MENA and an estimated 30 distinct dialects, the platform will focus on dialectal Arabic and English before expanding over the coming weeks to include other dialectal languages. 

“The 400 million native-Arabic-speaker market has been ignored for too long by speech technologies, as accuracy has remained one of the biggest challenges until now,” said Ryan Carmichael, CEO and founder of Kanari AI. “For the past three years, our leading Arabic speech recognition solutions have only been available for enterprises, governments, media companies, and intelligence groups. With the launch of Fenek AI, we are now making the same technology available to consumers.”

Users can also use the platform to transcribe audio containing both Arabic and English spoken in the same sentences—a common occurrence in the region. The technology is designed to navigate the different sociocultural contexts of the conversation to capture it in its entirety.

Kanari AI, founded in 2020, specializes in Arabic speech recognition technologies, namely automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language processing. They currently have offices operating out of Pasadena, CA; Doha, Qatar; Dubai, UAE; and Bangalore, India.