Project Relate started in 2018, when Google realised that its speech recognition technology could be improved to help people who have atypical speech to be better understood. Google found that standard speech recognition wouldn’t always work as well for people with atypical speech due to the algorithms not being trained on samples of their speech. This is why Project Relate was created to be custom trained on individuals’ unique speech patterns.

As a pilot project in Singapore, Project Relate was given to Allan, a person with non-typical speech and a positive attitude that would always shine through. Giving him a voice to match, and a chance to share his joy with others.