All credit for the fine-tuning work goes to the original authors. This repository only provides the GGML conversion for use with whisper.cpp and mobile applications.

Model Details

Base Model: OpenAI Whisper Base
Format: GGML (whisper.cpp compatible)
Language: kn
File Size: 141.10 MB
Model File: ggml-base-kn.bin
Conversion: Converted using whisper.cpp's convert-h5-to-ggml.py

Usage

With whisper.cpp

bash

# Clone whisper.cpp
git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
cd whisper.cpp

# Build
make

# Download this model
wget https://huggingface.co/wabisabisocial/whisper-base-kannada-ggml/resolve/main/ggml-base-kn.bin

# Run transcription
./main -m ggml-base-kn.bin -f audio.wav -l kn

With React Native (whisper.rn)

typescript

import WhisperContext from 'whisper.rn';

const context = await WhisperContext.initWithUrl(
  'https://huggingface.co/wabisabisocial/whisper-base-kannada-ggml/resolve/main/ggml-base-kn.bin'
);

const { result } = await context.transcribe(audioPath, {
  language: 'kn',
});

Direct Download

wget https://huggingface.co/wabisabisocial/whisper-base-kannada-ggml/resolve/main/ggml-base-kn.bin

Performance

For performance metrics and evaluation results, please refer to the original model.

License

This model is released under the Apache 2.0 License, matching the original model's license.

Per Apache 2.0 requirements:

✅ Commercial use allowed
✅ Modification allowed
✅ Distribution allowed
⚠️ Must include attribution to original authors
⚠️ Must include copy of license

Citation

If you use this model, please cite both the original model and OpenAI Whisper:

bibtex

@misc{whisper-kn-ggml-wabisabisocial,
  author = {wabisabisocial},
  title = {whisper-base-kannada-ggml},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  note = {GGML conversion of vasista22/whisper-kannada-base},
  howpublished = {\url{https://huggingface.co/wabisabisocial/whisper-base-kannada-ggml}}
}

@article{radford2022whisper,
  title = {Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision},
  author = {Radford, Alec and Kim, Jong Wook and Xu, Tao and Brockman, Greg and McLeavey, Christine and Sutskever, Ilya},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.04356},
  year = {2022}
}

Acknowledgments

Original Whisper model: OpenAI Whisper
GGML conversion tools: whisper.cpp
Fine-tuned model: vasista22/whisper-kannada-base