AI could help save a threatened language by adding it to your phone

For centuries, the now-endangered Crimean Tatar language (traditionally spoken in Crimea) has been threatened by a series of Russian invasions — first, by the Russian empire in the 18th and 19th centuries; then, by the forced deportations of Crimean tatars in 1944, ordered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. In 2014, Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea brought a new wave of repression for Crimean Tatars, worsened by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Convinced that a language's future is nowadays largely decided by its integration into everyday tech, Ukrainian AI company Respeecher decided to help the fight to preserve Crimean Tatar by integrating it into various voice recognition softwares.