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Meta’s New Program in Partnership with UNESCO
Meta has launched a new initiative called the Language Technology Partner Program in collaboration with UNESCO. The program aims to collect speech recordings and transcriptions to help improve AI technology for speech recognition and translation. Partners are being asked to provide over 10 hours of speech recordings, written text, and translations in various languages. The goal is to integrate these languages into AI models, which will later be available to the public for free use.
Focus on Underserved Languages
Meta’s initiative focuses on supporting languages that are underserved and underrepresented in AI systems. One of the early partners in the program is Nunavut, a remote territory in Northern Canada where some residents speak Inuktut. Meta's aim is to create AI systems that can understand and respond to people’s needs, regardless of language or cultural background, in line with UNESCO’s mission to support linguistic diversity.
Open Source Machine Translation Tool
As part of the program, Meta is also releasing a new open-source benchmark to evaluate machine translation models. This tool, made with help from linguists, supports seven languages and allows developers to access and contribute to improving it through the Hugging Face platform. This tool will help improve how AI handles language translation across different languages.
Meta’s Efforts to Improve AI and Address Criticism
While Meta frames these efforts as philanthropic, the company will also benefit from improved speech recognition and translation technology. Meta continues to expand the languages supported by its AI assistant, Meta AI, and test new features like voice translation in Instagram Reels. Despite these efforts, Meta has faced criticism for mishandling non-English content, especially in languages like Italian, Spanish, and Arabic. The company has stated that it is working on improving its translation and moderation tools to address these issues.
The official link to this news is https://about.fb.com/news/2025/02/announcing-language-technology-partner-program/.