Gen AI-powered software to help learn Tamil couplet collection 'Thirukural'

Chennai: Want to know what Thirukural, a collection of 1,330 couplets penned in Tamil, says on politics, life, and love, their explanations offered by multiple scholars and what they mean in English?

Thirukural.ai, a software powered by Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) technology, will answer all the above questions in one go.

Created and supported by Tamil Virtual Academy and Kissflow, a leading SaaS (Software as a Service) firm based out of Chennai, the ChatGPT-style interactive software was launched at the KaniTamil24 conference last week.

The software, which even allows users to generate creative and new couplets, makes it possible for anyone to learn about the profound teachings of saint poet Thiruvalluvar who wrote Thirukural at least 2,000 years ago.

The interactive software also collates explanations to all 1,330 couplets written by four scholars M Karunanidhi, M Varadarajan, Solomon Papaiah, and Parimelagar in Tamil, besides providing the English translation.

Thirukural is a classic Tamil literature which offers a remedy or a piece of advice for every issue that the modern world encounters and has been quoted widely by several political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The open-source software was developed in just about a month’s time. We will continue to make the software more interactive and user-friendly as our goal is to take Thirukural to the masses across the globe. Thirukural doesn’t belong to one language, but to the world,” Suresh Sambandam, CEO, Kissflow, told DH.

Thirukural is one of the very few classics that have been translated into several global languages and boasts of several websites that give out information in English and Tamil.

“For instance, explanations written by four scholars to couplets are considered credible, but you cannot find all of them in the same place. This software addresses the problem and brings everything under one roof. We wanted to use technology so that it reaches every nook and corner of the world,” Sambandam said.

He added the effort was to apply GenAI to Thirukural and make it possible for anyone to query the software on anything and everything about the classic Tamil literature.

Apart from Sambandam, his colleagues Vadivel G, Arjun G, Mayakrishnan R, and Selvakumar Duraipandian are the prime movers of this project.