Sunbird AI joins a five-year global commitment to help billions use AI in their own language and voice.
Sunbird AI is one of 60 initial signatories to a joint commitment announced today by the Gates Foundation and organizations across the global AI ecosystem: a shared five-year goal to help an estimated 3.4 billion people who speak languages currently underrepresented in today’s AI models use AI tools in their own language and voice.
The commitment brings together frontier AI labs, government ministries, philanthropies, developers, and implementing organizations from across the globe, each contributing according to its own expertise.
Many of the world’s languages, spoken by billions of people, are what researchers call low-resource languages: languages underrepresented in the data, tools, and benchmarks used to build and test AI. That gap means AI systems can be less accurate, less useful, or less able to understand entire linguistic communities — the same gap Sunbird AI has been working against directly.
“Artificial intelligence cannot deliver on its promise while entire linguistic communities remain excluded. Sunbird AI is building open text and speech technology for 67 low-resource languages across Africa already, proof that this work is achievable now. We join this commitment to help extend that same open infrastructure further, together with others doing the same,” said Dr. Ernest Mwebaze, Executive Director of Sunbird AI.
Over the next five years, signatories will work together across four areas: building an open language layer of shared data infrastructure, tracking progress through honest benchmarks, turning language data into usable tools, and reaching people safely and responsibly.
Read the full joint statement and signatory list on the Gates Foundation’s website.