According to UNESCO, 98 indigenous languages in Russia will disappear in the next 50 years.

Some of them have less than ten speakers. Most of them will leave no written literature behind. We created an AI that learns disappearing languages and can teach them back to people.

Russia is home to over 160 nationalities. But their cultures, their languages, their voices don't get equal representation in the media. Urbanization of the past decades had a detrimental effect on the local cultures, especially those of smaller ancient tribes. Young people consider the languages of their ancestors less useful and less prestigious. Films, songs, books, YouTube channels, websites, etc. mostly speak Russian. Word of mouth transmission from parents to children has stopped. This process is not unique to Russia, indigenous languages are disappearing all over the world.

The endangered languages of Russian tribes are extremely low resource languages. They are also low-density languages, i.e. they are spoken by very few people, often less than a hundred speakers. Sberbank believes that technology must serve to preserve and multiply both cultural and financial wealth of Russian people.

We created an AI that has learned disappearing languages and can teach them back to people.

Sberbank is the biggest and the most technologically advanced bank of Russia, with thousands of branches in the remotest parts of the country. Sberbank believes that technology must serve to preserve and multiply both cultural and financial wealth of Russian people. Russia is home to 160 different nationalities. According to UNESCO, 98 indigenous languages in Russia will disappear in the next 50 years. Some of them have less than ten speakers. Most of them will leave no written literature behind. Most Russians didn't know the languages even existed before this project.

This project took over two years in the making. These endangered languages are extremely low resource, low density languages. We went to remote villages of Russia and recorded hundreds of hours of natives talking. A specially built AI analyzed this linguistic material to reveal the general patterns and logic of the language. Learning algorithms expanded the lexicon based on statistical translation approach. Once the correspondence system between Russian and the endangered language was created, the language was fully preserved within the AI and could be learned by anyone who speaks Russian in the future.

On the 4th of November 2019, National Unity Day, Russia met the Immortals. A 1,5 min film has introduced the project during the news program on Russia's main channel. Russians could interact with the Immortals on a microsite and discover the unique worlds of Nganasans, Ingrians,

Paid media has reached 35 million people. Social media, press, TV shows and news added 70 million people. The country kept talking about the disappearing languages for 9 weeks. Further funding was secured for several years to come.

The AI can be now used to save all 98 endangered languages. Rare specialised linguists have reached out to help teach the Immortals other disappearing languages. There’re hundreds of disappearing languages around the world. This AI can be used to preserve all of them.