The interim presentation of the kAIxo project took place on 11 November 2024. Nicolas Lluis Araya is the project collaborator. Chatbots for dead, endangered, and extinct languages are being developed at the FHNW School of Business. One well-known example is @llegra, a chatbot for Vallader. Oliver Bendel recently tested the reach of GPTs for endangered languages such as Irish (Irish Gaelic), Maori, and Basque. According to ChatGPT, there is a relatively large amount of training material available for them. On 12 May 2024 – after Irish Girl and Maori Girl – a first version of Adelina, a chatbot for Basque, was created. It was later improved in a second version. As part of the “kAIxo” project (the Basque “kaixo” corresponds to the English “hello”), the chatbot or voice assistant kAIxo is being built to speak Basque. Its purpose is to keep users practising written or spoken language or to develop the desire to learn the endangered language. The chatbot is based on GPT-4o. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) plays a central role. A ChatSubs dataset is used, which contains dialogues in Spanish and three other official Spanish languages (Catalan, Basque, and Galician). Nicolas Lluis Araya presented a functioning prototype at the interim presentation. This is now to be expanded step by step.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
