The Ainu language has been spoken by the inhabitants of Japan’s northern islands since the early 12th century. Once spoken by thousands of people, the language is now spoken by only a handful of speakers. UNESCO has listed the language as an endangered language. To preserve the nearly extinct Ainu language, artificial intelligence (AI) technology is being used to play back hours of old audio recordings. Scientists are then practicing Ainu language through AI voices.
By 1870, about 15,000 people in Japan spoke the Ainu language. Later, the use of the Ainu language was banned in the country’s schools. After that, due to various government policies, this language and culture gradually almost disappeared. Recently, scientists have started working to revive the Ainu language and culture. And in this case, artificial intelligence technology is being used.
Although the Ainu language and culture have been lost over time, various information about the language has been preserved. And so, currently, the information is being preserved using AI speech recognition technology. Tatsuya Kawahara, a professor of computer science at Kyoto University, who led the project, said that the sound quality is not very good. Many videos are recorded at home on analog devices, so there is extra noise. The work is really challenging.
According to scientists, this new method is creating a huge database for AI. Although AI can try to understand the rules of the language itself and transcribe it, it is not possible in the case of endangered languages like Ainu. And so AI technology is being taught how to convert various Ainu language utterances into text. Then AI is being used to generate speech from the text.