The Welsh Government has announced a new data partnership with OpenAI to improve how AI-technologies works in Welsh.
In the Senedd this week, Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Energy and Welsh Language, Jeremy Miles, outlined his key priorities for the Welsh language, with technology a golden thread running through each one. His priorities include:
- Publishing a Welsh Language Education Bill in the coming weeks which will enable all school pupils in Wales to become independent and confident Welsh speakers;
- Supporting economic development in communities with a high density of Welsh speakers to ensure the language flourishes alongside economic growth;
- Creating opportunities to speak and to enjoy through the medium of Welsh by increasing language transmission, both within families and within communities.
Jeremy Miles said: “Cymraeg belongs to us all, and we all have a duty to protect it and to make sure it grows in all aspects of society. I want to see more Welsh for more people, and the priorities I’m setting out today will ensure we’re on the right path to meet our target of a million Welsh speakers and increasing the daily use of the language by 2050.
“All of us use technology one way or another, and increasingly, we’re seeing AI being used in more situations. I’m excited to see how the new data partnership with OpenAI will lead to improving how AI-technologies work in Welsh. Working with OpenAI in the past, we’ve been able to share Welsh language resources and Welsh Government funded components.”
The partnership will build open data archives to contribute data to the research community, to improve linguistic performance of AI models and applications.
Anna Makanju, VP of Global Affairs at OpenAI, said: “The Welsh Government has been a great partner in creating an open-source dataset for training language models. At OpenAI, we want our models to understand as many languages and cultures as possible, so they can benefit as many people as possible.”
Since the Welsh Government published its Welsh language technology action Plan in 2018, it has funded, created, and worked on many of the digital components that the language needs.
Jeremy Miles added: “I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved under the Welsh language technology action Plan, but this work is never done and dusted. So today, I’m inviting people to submit information or ideas about what technological developments would help them use more Welsh, and what needs to happen to make it easier for them to use technology in Welsh.”
