“The biggest thing you need in language revitalization is for people to choose to use the language, and technology can’t do that — it can’t change the fabric of society, but it can give people more tools,” Twitchell said.

He said AI could be a part of that growth while respecting the sovereignty of the language and knowing that the language belongs to the Tlingit people.

“We need to put our language back out there because it was taken from us, it was prohibited, and we need those conscious efforts to put it back into society on the land,” he said. “And, we have more people learning, and people that are generally learning faster, but we are losing our high fluency elders. The goal is to create as many speakers as we can while holding on to the authenticity of the language and taking it to new places.”

Read more:

Larson, C. (2023, February 17). Does AI have a place in Tlingit language revitalization? Juneau Empire. https://www.juneauempire.com/news/does-ai-have-a-place-in-tlingit-language-revitalization/