Meta has joined forces with UNESCO to boost translation and speech recognition AI, according to Techcrunch. Through its Language Technology Partner Program, Meta is inviting collaborators to contribute at least 10 hours of speech recordings and large written texts to enhance AI capabilities for underserved languages.
The partnership has already garnered support from the government of Nunavut, aiming to develop translation systems for the Inuit languages, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun. Meta emphasized its commitment to underserved languages in line with UNESCO’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
Additionally, Meta is launching an open-source translation benchmark called BOUQuET, designed to evaluate AI translation models. This initiative aligns with Meta’s broader strategy to improve AI translation tools, which recently included an AI-powered dubbing feature for videos. The company’s AI assistant is now available in 43 countries and over a dozen languages.
