BFSI insights

MERaLiON-SER: Robust Speech Emotion Recognition Model for English and SEA Languages

Published 12 Nov 2025 · arXiv · Hardik B. Sailor
arXiv preview

Overview

MERaLiON-SER is a speech emotion recognition model designed for English and Southeast Asian languages. It uses a hybrid objective combining weighted categorical cross-entropy and Concordance Correlation Coefficient losses for joint discrete and dimensional emotion modelling.

Key Insights

  • Model Performance: MERaLiON-SER consistently outperforms open-source speech encoders and large Audio-LLMs in multilingual evaluations.
    • Evidence: Evaluations across Singaporean languages and public benchmarks.
    • Verifiable: Yes, through independent testing on specified benchmarks.
  • Emotion Modelling: Captures both discrete emotions and fine-grained dimensions like arousal, valence, and dominance.
    • Evidence: Model's dual approach in emotion representation.
    • Verifiable: Yes, through model architecture analysis.

BFSI Relevance

  • Why Relevant: Enhances customer interaction systems by integrating emotion recognition, crucial for customer service and fraud detection.
  • Primary Sector: Financial Services
  • Subsectors: Customer Service, Fraud Detection
  • Actionable Implications:
    • Implement emotion recognition in customer service to improve client interactions.
    • Use emotion data to enhance fraud detection systems by identifying stress or deception in voice patterns.
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