Why does your voice assistant sometimes not understand you if you just speak Flemish? Because AI is usually trained with Dutch from the Netherlands. And we want to change that! With maarallee.be, we are building a technology that also understands your way of speaking - whether you are from Neerpelt, Ostend or Borgerhout.

Maarallee.be is a citizen-science project in which, together with citizens, we are creating a large database of Flemish speech. We ask people to record short audio recordings at home - in their own language, with their own accent, dialect or tone of voice. Those recordings are automatically transcribed by AI and then corrected by volunteers. In this way, we help AI understand Flemish better step by step.                                                                     

Who are the partners?  

• Scivil, the Flemish knowledge centre for citizen science, actively involves citizens in collecting and transcribing speech data.
• KU Leuven (PSI) is developing the speech technology and training the AI based on Flemish recordings.
• The Department of Work, Economy, Science, Innovation and Social Economy (WEWIS) of the Flemish government supports the project within the Flemish AI policy plan and the science communication policy plan.

Why is this important?  Speech technology is increasingly used in our daily lives - from subtitling to medical applications, from education to customer services. But without good data, AI is not inclusive. By building together a representative corpus of spoken Flemish, we ensure that AI applications take into account who we really are and how we really speak.

At maarallee.be, citizen science is central. This means: scientific research in which everyone can participate. Whether you speak up, help improve transcriptions or encourage others to participate - your contribution counts. Together, we build technology that works for everyone. 

📢 Get involved!  Using our web app, you can make your voice heard in a simple way. Young or old, with or without an accent - the more voices, the better. We are particularly aiming at groups that are underrepresented in AI data today: women, young people, Limburgers, non-native speakers...

Because AI may be smart - only with your help will it become truly Flemish.

➡️ Found out more on www.maarallee.be