For artificial intelligence models, learning doesn’t come naturally. Training an AI requires vast quantities of well-organized data tailored for the specific needs of a project, a resource that can be difficult to collect.

Seattle-based DefinedCrowd Inc. is working to make quality information more easily accessible for companies building AI applications. To fuel the effort, the startup today announced that it has raised a $11.8 million funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners.

The investment also saw the participation of more than a half-dozen other backers. They included Amazon.com Inc., Sony Corp. and Mastercard Inc. along with a number of venture capital firms. Amazon is currently collaborating with DefinedCrowd to help its Alexa personal assistant recognize a broader range of accents.

DefinedCrowd offers a cloud-based platform that enables companies to crowdsource data for their AI projects. The startup currently focuses on three domains: speech recognition, computer vision and natural-language processing. It has built up a community of more than 45,000 contributions who help organizations assemble training information for their projects.

According to DefinedCrowd, this human-driven approach makes it possible to have a data set customized down to the smallest details. A bank building a customer service chatbot, for example, could assemble a data set consisting of sample support requests. It could instruct the DefinedCrowd community to focus on the specific types of questions that real clients typically ask.

Companies can customize a data set in even more fine-grained ways if an AI project calls for it. For voice files, an organization could have each line read out by people from different regions to help a neural network recognize accents. DefinedCrowd also provides the ability to annotate and categorize records for the purposes of aiding the AI learning process.

DefinedCrowd claims that its community is capable of handling 500,000 data “units” per day across 46 languages. The startup will use the capital to step up its growth efforts and hire more employees.

Image: DefinedCrowd