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Olugbemi. Adeyinka Ogunleye
3 months ago
Overview
After creating 2 million GPT tokens, this UNILAG student has built an AI text-to-speech model with Nigerian accent
In November 2024, when I asked Saheed Azeez how difficult it was to create Naijaweb — a dataset of 230 million GPT-2 tokens based on Nairaland — he brushed it off as something simple. "It's just web scraping," he said.
However, in my latest conversation with him, his new passion project seems to have pushed him further. He calls it YarnGPT, a text-to-speech AI model that can read text aloud in a Nigerian accent.
In a world where AI can generate lifelike voices in seconds, a text-to-speech model with a Nigerian accent might not seem groundbreaking at first. But when you consider two things, it becomes a big deal.
First, Azeez is a Nigerian university student with limited resources. Second, developing a model that accurately captures the nuances of a Nigerian accent is technically challenging.
From tokenising audio to the many mathematical concepts Azeez referenced while explaining the process, it was clear that this wasn’t a simple task. Even Azeez, in his usual fashion, didn’t downplay the effort involved.
"It was quite tasking, especially gathering the data needed to make this happen."
How YarnGPT was created
Inspired by the success of Naijaweb, Azeez was eager to build something new. "The amount of conversations and interest people had in Naijaweb was a great motivation. Imagine getting featured on Techpoint Africa; it motivated me to do this."
He was also motivated by failure. Before starting YarnGPT, he had applied for a job at a Nigerian AI company but didn’t perform as well in the interview as he had expected.
YarnGPT became the project that would help him improve his skills and increase his chances of securing such roles in the future.
More: https://techpoint.africa/2025/02/04/how-unilag-student-created-yarngpt-ai/
