An end to mangled Maori pronunciations is the aim of an Aotearoa New Zealand voice in Google Maps.

TIRED of hearing your guidance system make an absolute mess of Maori place names?

It’s a matter Google and New Zealand experts has taken to heart, and hopefully remedied.

The multinational and Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, have announced the launch of an Aotearoa New Zealand voice in Google Maps.

From almost to authentic – today, New Zealanders can hear Aotearoa place names the way they should sound, according to a PR spruik shared today.

Specific to NZ, the AI-powered Text to Speech (TTS) model speaks English with a Kiwi accent and can correctly pronounce cities and towns with te reo Māori names.

The introduction has excited Google’s country manager here.

Says Caroline Rainsford: “I’m incredibly excited for New Zealanders to experience this new local voice in Google Maps.

“Two things have been critical to the success of this update: Advancements in AI have enabled our Text to Speech model to pronounce te reo Māori place names in an English sentence. And importantly, this would not have been possible without our years-long partnership and deep collaboration with Te Taura Whiri.

We’re so proud to be able to launch this voice in New Zealand because we know how important it is to pronounce our local place names correctly.”

Ngahiwi Apanui-Barr, Chief Executive of Te Taura Whiri said: “This exciting tool secures a future for te reo Māori in the digital age. We are proud to partner with Google to make New Zealand’s unique language visible, valued and voiced.

“Like all other languages, Māori placenames carry stories that connect us to our histories, people and achievements. The first step to unlocking those stories is correct pronunciation. If we can hear the words said correctly, we can say the words correctly. This is an important step forward in making te reo Māori a normal, everyday language.”

As Aotearoa prepares to celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori under the theme ‘Te Reo Towns’, this technology offers real-time guidance on how to hear and say Māori place names correctly”, Ngahiwi says.

Māori data sovereignty and Google’s AI Principles have been central to the development of this Text To Speech model. The pronunciation rules the voice uses for Māori place names have been guided by Te Taura Whiri and publicly available New Zealand Geographic Board data. Initially Te Taura Whiri will be kaitiaki of the Māori lexicon.

Long term, the plan is to establish a group of interested parties for the kaitiakitanga of the Māori data. The goal is to ensure Māori academics, researchers and communities would have the ability to access this data, share the benefit and contribute to the evolution of this kaupapa.

This is the second project to come out of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two organisations in 2023.

The update will roll out over the next two weeks for Google Maps users, but the technology may not get every te reo Māori word correct from the start. For launch, the partnership has focused on te reo Māori cities and towns. It’ll look to update more streets and roads moving forward.

And this isn’t a one-off update.

“E te iwi, if you come across te reo Māori place names and street names that aren’t being pronounced correctly, we want to hear from you so we can teach the technology the right way to say the word,” Ngahiwi says.

People can submit words for review via the Te Taura Whiri website: https://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/google-maps