If you're interested in dabbling with AI, a Raspberry Pi makes for a surprisingly good friend. Even if you're not using the dedicated Raspberry Pi AI kit, you can still make some cool AI-based projects with the SBCs. One ingenious dabbler has created the ASRAI, a voice-activated AI model that runs on a Raspberry Pi 4.

ASRAI - a secure and private Raspberry Pi assistant you can build yourself

As spotted by PC Guide, this cool project comes to us via Adam Frydrych on Hackster.io. This project combines a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, a Sony Playstation Eye, and a 3.5-inch GPIO Screen to create a personal AI assistant. Adam describes how he put the project together in great detail, including a section on where the Sony Playstation Eye comes into play. Turns out they contain a 4-microphone array that's ripe for ripping out and adding to a Raspberry Pi board, and they only cost around $4 second-hand.

Once the hardware was in place, it was time to get the assistant up and running:

My AI assistant uses a similar approach to other, successful voice recognition systems (namely Rhasspy). In my case, however, the Raspberry Pi 4B runs a voice recognition software (called VOSK) locally and interfaces with a large language model hosted on one of my PCs through an OpenAI-compliant API endpoint (Ollama). Thanks to NordVPN’s Meshnet I can, and actually do, that from anywhere in the world.

To add a bit of charm, Adam included a face for when the assistant is sleeping or listening. If you decide to follow Adam's steps, you can download the project for yourself and freely change out these images for whatever you like. Just be sure to have a 3D printer and a soldering iron handy, as the project will require both.

If you'd like more AI-based Pi shenanigans, check out when our writer Daniel Allen turned his Raspberry Pi into an AI assistant. And if you fancy using newer hardware, Daniel also tried out several AIs on the Raspberry Pi 5 so you don't have to.