₦airaland Forum

Tobi2025:
Nice one but where can we download it

Dougad:
All these plenty stories without a link to the gpt?

It's not hosted, I think. You're going to have to install it to your own machine or VM like how people get models on hugging face.

The link:

https://github.com/saheedniyi02/yarngpt

franchasofficia:
Don't worry, most of those nauseating policies he has been dishing out using Presidential order will be reversed by the court. Most are already being challenged in court. They can only last for some weeks or months not permanently because they will be reversed by the US Supreme Court

Yeah, the US is a lawsuit country. Legal action is their tool for justice, and for oppression. Hopefully there's some sanity back to the US, and the international organizations it largely chairs get less confused.

franchasofficia:
Trump is really making a huge mistake with the hike in tariffs, withdrawal from UN, USAID, etc, I already said that. Those senseless policies will never stand because they will come back to hurt America and her interest

If this goes on, the US would sooner become a "dead", forgotten country with technology like Switzerland, and that's it.

It's worrisome that there are no checks and balances in the US, that one man makes very huge decisions and that were not debated in their houses; and a rich man with very obvious political interests is with power and is not checked. Even in Nigeria, the tax bill and subsidy removal were met with huge protests, opinions, debates and the President could fear for his life. But in the US, the Americans and past politicians are just there.

The US does seem like a scrappy country, propped by media and hype, and their weapons, nothing more.

Nlfpmod, shouldn't we recognize our Yarngpt? It's open-source.

https://github.com/saheedniyi02/yarngpt

Yes, that you'd leave.

RandDigital:
It's gonna blow up in their faces - global sentiment is gonna move elsewhere away from the US. Life after Trump is uncertain for Israel, they'll never find peace.

If this trend of Trump actually continues, that the US is finished, less influential among countries, and less media attention and so on given to the US, the UN (practically, the charter of no more world war, charter of upholding human rights), the many enemies of Israel would have no fear anymore cause the US or the UN has no influence in their countries anymore, and individually, they may go about their unreported onslaughts against Israelis and whoever.

Just imagine, there was Houthi rebels acting against Israeli ships. No US media anymore, nothing to fear anymore, what would stop the numerous undocumented terrorists and bandits in e.g. West Africa from migrating and doing theirs? And who would help the US investigate or provide intel when there's less dealings with them, and so on... And how many could the US fight before it's called a world war and US gets the Germany treatment?

The US no longer has the control of Europe and Japan and China? Those folks don't give a hoot about Israel, what would stop the next government of Egypt and the surrounding countries to also act massively against Israel?

One way is to ensure the UN stays intact, removing the US as the epicenter of it; or the US actually getting its acts together - what are their Democrats doing?

I can imagine what may be going through the minds of PM Netanyahu. Anyways, this is better than nothing.

After creating 2 million GPT tokens, this UNILAG student has built an AI text-to-speech model with Nigerian accent

Azeez Saheed YarnGPT founder

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 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.

Building an AI model that sounds Nigerian required gathering a vast amount of Nigerian voices.

"I used some movies that were available online. I extracted their audio and subtitles."

Nollywood produces over 2,500 movies a year, and with many filmmakers uploading their work to YouTube, it seemed like Azeez had plenty of data to work with. But in reality, he had almost none.

"The problem with building in Nigeria is data. Replicating what has been built overseas isn’t that hard, but data always gets in the way."

While there are thousands of movies for him to choose from the audio wasn't up to the standard he wanted, and their subtitles were inaccurate. To compensate, Azeez turned to Hugging Face, an open-source platform for machine learning and data science. He combined the audio from Nigerian movies with high-quality datasets from Hugging Face to train his model.

The next step was training the AI model, but without access to his own GPU, he had to rely on cloud computing services like Google Colab. This cost him $50 (₦80,000) — a significant amount for a university student. Unfortunately, it was a waste.

"The model I built wasn’t working well, and the $50 cloud credit was burnt just like that. It was painful for me."

Determined to find another way, he discovered Oute AI, a platform that had developed a text-to-speech model in an autoregressive manner.

"The way the model works is, you give it a piece of text, and it predicts one word at a time. It takes that word, adds it back to the text, then predicts the next one — kind of like how ChatGPT completes sentences. That’s what makes it autoregressive."

While I found the autoregressive framework difficult to understand, Azeez pointed out that it simply gave him better results.

Maths, tokenisation, and the hard part of YarnGPT
Oute AI provided a structure, but Azeez still had to build his own model. He took a language model called SmolLM2-360M from Hugging Face and added speech functionality to it, a process that involved major algorithmic changes.

After this, the final-year Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Lagos had to spend another $50 to train the model. The training took three days.

Interestingly, like he pointed out when he created Naijaweb, AI models need data to be tokenised. Large language models (LLMs) understand numbers, not words, so tokenisation converts words into numerical representations.

"If we were to tokenise the word CALCULATED, for example, we could split it into four tokens: CAL-CU-LA-TED. A number is assigned to each token."

Meanwhile, tokenizing audio is different.

"Tokenizing audio is basically breaking down continuous sound waves into smaller, manageable pieces that a model can understand and process. Unlike text, which has clear breaks between words, audio is continuous—there are no natural pauses in a raw waveform.

"So, the model needs to convert the sound into a sequence of discrete values, kind of like turning a long speech into tiny puzzle pieces. These smaller audio tokens can then be used to train the AI, and later, the model can reassemble them to generate speech that sounds natural."

This entire process was made possible by a wave tokenizer. Using resources from Hugging Face, Oute AI, and other Nigerian repositories, Azeez was able to create YarnGPT.

Publicising YarnGPT
Saheed Azeez: He built Naijaweb which is 230 million GPT2 tokens based on nairaland
Azeez might be a nerd, but he isn’t afraid to put himself in front of a camera to showcase his work. In a two-minute video, he explained YarnGPT and caught the attention of 138,000 people on X (formerly Twitter), including Timi Ajiboye, Co-founder of Hellicarrier (formerly BuyCoins).

Creating YarnGPT was difficult, but making the video was another hurdle.

"I called my friend and logistics manager, Aremu, and told him I wanted to make a video. We reached out to another friend who had a camera he wasn’t even using, and then we went to yet another friend’s house to record.

"We rearranged the whole house and used their TV as the background. His mum wasn’t too pleased when she returned."

The results were worth it. The video got thousands of views across social media, and people began testing YarnGPT. The model could not only pronounce English in a Nigerian accent but could also read Nigerian languages—Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba.

It has various applications. Content creators can use it for voice-overs in Nigerian accents, Google Maps could provide directions in Nigerian languages, and it could even enhance accessibility for non-English speakers.

Nigeria and the AI race
While innovators like Azeez and American-born Ijemma Onwuzulike (creator of Igbo Speech) are developing exciting AI models, Nigeria remains far behind in the AI race. The industry has evolved beyond a hobbyist’s playground into a battleground for global superpowers, with the U.S. government committing $500 billion to AI development.

Meanwhile, AI breakthroughs like DeepSeek have shaken up Wall Street, causing giants like Nvidia to lose billions in market value due to new competition.

Even Azeez acknowledges Nigeria’s position.

"Honestly, we’re way off. We’re not even in the race. The big AI models today — like OpenAI’s or the ones from China — are trained on massive datasets with huge computational resources, things we don’t have here."

But he remains optimistic.

"I think there’s a way forward. Instead of trying to build from scratch, we can focus on localising AI for our own needs. We can take what’s already been built and adapt it for Nigerian languages and accents. That’s how we can start catching up."

Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has been vocal about positioning the country as a key player in AI development. Perhaps, with talents like Azeez, there is hope.

Source:
https://techpoint.africa/2025/02/04/how-unilag-student-created-yarngpt-ai/

Well said.

He could have even added, "is that Donald Trump speaking or the billionaire Elon Musk?" Trump's a puppet.😅

Bea1234:
My power button haff spoil. I need a reliable on and off tapping app for my phone pls... 🙏🏻🙏🏻

The one on my settings is just offing only. If I tap again, it won't on.

I need good off/on app guys.. 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Since you already have a power off feature available, long press volume button and plug a charger to the phone at the same time, that'd power your android phone on.

But as others said, fix the button. It's pretty cheap. It's not an IC problem.

Rapmoney:
Can you identify the female here amongst these? State your reason(s).

Let's have some fun!

Happy Sunday folks!

The middle one. The sitting position says it all, no manspreading compared to the flanking two.

Also, the shoulder is less as wide, and the pelvis is wider.

Angelfrost:
Lol... It's not about A.I

The issue is your teaching methods and the glaring lack of common sense or rudimentary intelligence among the students.

If a Postgraduate student doesn't know how to maximise A.I to eradicate duplicity and plagiarism, then that student needs to go back to secondary school.

How engaging are your lectures? Do you actually interact with the students? Or do you just repeatedly give out handouts and boring explanations?!!


Yes, a lot of students are mentally lazy, but truth be told... Many more lecturers are extremely poor and uncreative as tutors.

Wouldn't be about mentally lazy or uncreative if you ask me, but the students most likely do not have the TIME to be 'wasting' on assignments when there's AI that could do it for them - efficiency.

In SOMALIA. America bombing on order of Donald Trump in Somalia in Africa.

hkidola00:
wait what if the person finishes and goes home to bath with water and soap...does that help

No, not at all. If the person had a cut (could be as tiny as a scratched body surface, shaving wound, any cut), sometimes without a cut even, and an extremely thin microbial makes its way into the body, beneath the flesh or spread through the bloodstream, that'd result to infections. The person's body would be hosting a very dangerous bacteria or virus or fungi and they could get really sick.

Sometimes a worm could even lay its eggs into a non-wounded skin.

A 30% bet may be to bathe with antiseptic like Septol, Savlon. But the 100% bet is to not enter such water to begin with. Mycobacterium for example lurks in aquariums, and could lead to skin ulcer or leprosy or tuberculosis, depending on the type.

Better to wear rubber boots, limit to legs in water, and cast nets or several hooks than go hunting fishes in their muds. Many are lucky, but everyday may not be a lucky day.

You're not scared of diseases? Entering such water with full bodies. Many aquatic bacteria, viruses would be looming there.

TheCongo2:
The war in the Congo has nothing to do with Russian and uranium—it's about coltan and other rare minerals that power the global tech industry. Coltan is essential for making smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices, and Rwanda has been falsely presenting itself as a major coltan exporter while smuggling it from the Congo.

For over 25 years, Rwanda has been involved in destabilizing eastern Congo to keep control over this valuable resource. The Western powers backing Rwanda benefit from this arrangement because it ensures a steady flow of minerals at low costs, without Congo directly profiting from its own wealth.

This is why the conflict never ends—it's an economic war disguised as an ethnic or political struggle.

The arrangement that the Kagame Rwanda (and Uganda) has had in stealing Congo's resource wasn't enough, he got greedy and wants total territorial control.

The high-level strategy could have been pressuring for a ceasefire, but since he's using proxy, a better approach may be through the AU, proscribing the rebels and calling for coalitions to fight them off, and agreeing on a peace pact going forward. Of course, there'd be catches..

I feel for the Congolese people caught in the direct confrontation. Nigeria ministry's silence is shocking, there's too many complexities.

Botragelad:
Someone up there is still blaming the west! 😂😂

You're a bot, could you shut up on African matters? The West supports Israel slash the West and Israel are one, beautiful. But could you shush your narrative away from African matters?

Olu317:
0balufonlll
I love your open mindedness,even if you find it surprising. And no! I did not pursue hebrew origin intentionally, never! There is no smoke without fire if you have deep knowledge of different world cultures as well as the languages,of the most debated Race on earth. Infact,I have more to gain locally as Yoruba than so called ‘Hebrew,' but God is the reason for this revelation with seeable evidence. Truthfulluly intermarriages does not mean same stock which made Yoruba extremely bias,with a saying, ‘ òmò àtì bà/bàbà kí ní oko kí o má sí àlà . This thickness of Yorubas being able to separate who is who is very intriguing. Hebrew culture is older than 10,000 years old contrary to your believe. If you have read the Christian Bible very well,you will know a personality called Moses, which meant ‘drawn from the river' a river in Egypt with unknown name . And the name was given by an Hebrew slave maiden that told pharaoh's princess. Funny enough, the original translation of the name is ‘ Moshe'. This word has has Yoruba etymology ; Mu ni Osé or, Mu ni osà. Literally ,drawn from Osé river or drawn from òsà river. The point here is that ,it is not possible for this semblance without connection and these extremely talented group of people are the dominant force. On your question, research as that period, wasn't thorough enough but today, Conton's perspective has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that your and mine ancestors are the reason the world would be saved by God . If you doubt, mention the actual words for the names for the following in Yoruba; poverty, mother, foreskin colour.
Perhaps, you will wonder why is such possible and begin to see from a deeper perspective. And these words are non African or anywhere even among Arabs.

Test me, I insist.


Cheers.

Hey! I'm replying to this your 7 year old post, hope you don't mind.

I was taking a peep at this parallel. Some Jews for example, not all, practice this art/act of circling their heads with a live animal (cock or hen) 3/7*, and then slaughtering it or so with the belief it would take away their sins. It is believed to have pagan origin because it is not in the Torah, but they practise it anyways.

Now, I look at Ifa (perhaps there are other paganism in Africa too), and it has this solution to problem [adifa fun orunmila] of swirling chicken or catfish or pigeon around the head, and then slaughtering to eat or just leaving it out live.

Also, some Jews, not all, pagan origin too I must say, that believe, give to the poor that your sins/bad luck would just go away. Also, in Ifa, adifa fun orunmila, we have solutions that is this.

There are some others, but these are the ones I recall, the swirling animal to swap your sins (for Ifa, your bad luck), and giving to the poor with the actual intent to transfer your bad lucks away from you.


So, I got this theory. That far back then, Oduduwa's parents and Orunmila, and some of Jews (perhaps travellers) did share a spot, lived in close societies or communities to the extent of these very obvious similarities.

Languages may have been influenced, as well as spirituality and mythicism. And that spot may have just been right there in the middle east or North Africa or Sudan region.

It'd further the lack of divisionism that was the case back in the days, the days without international passports or white man invented racism, and open-mindedness to new knowledge/other cultures.

Please, let the executive order stay, retard. When they realized it would reduce the influence of America in those so-called poor countries, and America's diplomats would be ignored. Retain the executive order.

Of course, they are always Nigerians and are always welcome. It is not easy to cross to another country's border illegally for 'better life'. They are brave, and should be welcome properly.

Tellmeastory:
The funniest ones are the ones crying after learning they will lose their free healthcare.

They were all enjoying the ‘Affordable Care Act’ introduced by Obama, which guaranteed universal health coverage.

Trump campaigned saying he would end “Obama Care”.

Millions of the poor racist whites thought ‘Obama Care’ was a special health program Obama had established to benefit black and brown people.

So millions of whites voted for Trump based on his promise to “end the disaster called Obama Care”.

Only to find out that “Obama Care” is the “Affordable Care Act”!!

Many are so devastated.

They lost their healthcare because of their racism.

Testament that Americans are so ignorant. So, they didn't know Obama Care was their affordable health care, and I'm sure most would have been so arrogant in their defence against the Obama Care.

Hate of the republican voters for Obama really blinded them. And up the notch is their ignorance.

Nigeria-concerned, as the FG is going about its usual businesses, it should also remember that Congo is in turmoil and Congolese people are caught in chaos and are dying.

As the FG is going about its usual businesses, it should also remember that Congo is in turmoil and Congolese people are caught in chaos and are dying.

There was this particular stock that increased over 257% the last I checked, within one year of holding it. I was shocked. Wheres NB was tanking. About -67% loss on that one, had to drop it.

Anyways, as the FG is going about its usual businesses, it should also remember that Congo is in turmoil and Congolese people are caught in chaos and are dying.

As the FG is going about its usual businesses, it should also remember that Congo is in turmoil and Congolese people are caught in chaos and are dying.

cococandy:
No before this they had so much talk about not needing votes to win. Elon himself said he’ll go to prison if he fails and Trump loses. He called it before voting was over on his private app. Democrats are too proper. They won’t make any official claims until they have incontrovertible proof. They dont want to be compared to republicans. Even though everyone can clearly see the truth. Well I can’t cry more than the bereaved. The people who will most negatively affected by Trump are his voters.


I’m American. No offense taken

Ok, I'm going to believe this. The Trump actually had been behaving like a rigged-in politician, like a politician on little time, similar to those coup plotters. Lol.

Yes, the Democrats had better be proper and not let Americans or even the rest of the world turn to conspiracy theorists like the Republicans.

cococandy:
He rigged it.

Democrats don’t want to talk about it because they don’t want to found like coo coo republicans who are known election deniers.

But he’s bragged about it and Elon has bragged about it.

The rest of those who ACTUALLY voted for him are ignorant. They’re crying now because they’re googling the meaning of what they voted and they want to reverse their votes.

All people like me have to do is sit and watch them learn. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Thanks for informing me. 🙏

I checked the internet though, this link: https://www.c-span.org/clip/public-affairs-event/user-clip-trump-admits-they-rigged-the-election/5150039
The Trump was saying Joe Biden rigged the election in 2020, reason he's now President in 2025 to get to witness World cup and olympics in 2026 and 2028.

Also, I saw the comment that Elon Musk is a computer guy... Perhaps, it was just a comment, not that Elon Musk computer-rigged vote counting machine in the Pennsylvania.

The rest of those who ACTUALLY voted for him are ignorant. They’re crying now because they’re googling the meaning of what they voted and they want to reverse their votes.

😅This, yeah, the Trump is like an image of a typical American person, ignorant and weird. No offense to you to if you're already American though. They deserve him.

cococandy:
You guys have no clue what’s happening.

Trump doesn’t want affordable healthcare for Americans. Biden signed a bill to make diabetic medication $35 for old people on Medicare. Trump has just signed a bill to override. Republicans have always stood against the affordable care act that gave low income people access to health insurance.

Trump wants to cut down every single expense that helps anyone who is low income in or out of America and give it to his billionaire friends in subsidies and tax cuts.

You guys are so misinformed it’s heartbreaking to see you actually believe this

If this was the case, how come Americans, up to 63% electoral votes went to him?

They wanted to spite the Kamala?
They didn't trust the Biden-Harris continuing administration?
They were blinded by the inflation last year, and assumed Trump would solve it despite this?
They hated Biden news carrying that he's aiding Israel?


Which was it?
You live in America? How come the Trump got massive votes despite this your claim, or they didn't know? I'm only curious.

free2ryhme:
I get the point about supporting Trump’s decision to halt HIV funding for Nigeria. The fraud in the sector is frustrating, with many corrupt individuals benefiting while the funds don’t reach the people who truly need them. It’s unfair to American taxpayers who genuinely intended to help. That said, cutting the funding completely might hurt millions of innocent Nigerians relying on the program for life-saving treatment. A better approach would be stricter oversight and accountability to ensure the funds go where they’re needed, rather than punishing everyone for the actions of a few.

Using AI (chatgpt) again?

givedemwotowoto:
You’re joining BRICS to rival and weaken USA abi? Oya go and collect your healthcare funding from China and Russia without them first taking your sovereignty as collateral.

Go to city centers in many parts of the country, there are free maternity and healthcare services for women and children in many instances, how much of that is funded by FG?

Common sense should be common.

They aren't joining BRICS to rival and weaken the US. You guys are funny. They are joining BRICS to slowly wean themselves from their sole dependence on the US.

RE: Columbian government officials' assets domiciled in the US were seized/restricted access to, and their family members' too. Does that make any sense to you?

With BRICS, in similar ways, they want to be able to have their assets in multiple currencies for example and trade with any other country without any toddler in power in the US pettying up and restricting their assets or their family members'.

Think about companies too that were a competitor to US's companies and in their own local economies, bullied by the US.

US stopping funding is a correct call in the comity of diplomats as they'd slowly have zero diplomatic ties with the US and zero reasons to expect to spend dollars or pick whatever calls from the US. Trump is actually helping BRICS and the de-dollarization agenda.

Perhaps, later, there'd be no more free passes for their illegal/exploitative miners in Congo DRC, or in Bolivia, or in whatever countries they held much exploitative powers on...

Seunmuham:
Like I said no sane country will love China nor America. You are just not seeing beyond nose

I doubt any country wants to be loved either. Love is ephemeral and wouldn't necessarily mean securing their own country's national interest.

But in the world power slash bipolar world order dynamics, those are the requirements China or Russia or whatever else would need to tick to topple US from its 'monopoly' world power seat.

Seunmuham:
With all these respect you talked about and half of developing countries love and respect China more. Half of developing countries wish the death of America. No worry China will pick up the bill. Only a foolish country will love either China or America or Russia

I don't believe they love China. They appreciate China. China is yet to seep into mainstream media. Once China or Russia or whatever country becomes the go-to destination for fun, financial services, games, technologies and whatnot quality of life, leaders would love it. And China grows more in military technologies, and capable of defending itself and poses as at least 70% independent in military self-defense, your political leaders and their relatives would naturally love the China, and diplomacy with them would be freer. Should China then couple it with free monies here and there, the ministries would prioritize any China-related items in their queues.

Just be the go-to for quality of life items and destinations, pose great military strength and have foot in other countries (through aids or whatever) and have a great share of the mass media, you're the leader. Check all great empires.

And US? US isn't loved because it's become a bully. Even the Americans are seen as ignorant, arrogant and proud.

USA is tolerated, not loved. And now, they'd have no reasons to tolerate it anymore cause there's no more benefits for them - no money, no aid, nothing.