Preserving Indigenous cultures and languages with the help of AI

Growing up on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana, Michael Running Wolf was especially aware of the importance of language. For decades, it was illegal under U.S. law to speak Native languages in schools. So in regard to learning them, generations of Indigenous children went without. Running Wolf grew up to become a computer scientist, landing a job working on Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa. A few years ago, he started to wonder how he might get something like Alexa to speak Cheyenne and other Indigenous languages. That has become his lifelong mission.