Partner: UNESCO (pilot initiative)
Objective: Use AI art to raise awareness of endangered languages through visual storytelling.
Process: Ruby trained multilingual language models and image generators on folklore, poems, and oral histories from five endangered languages, including Ainu, Sámi, and Mapuche. The resulting artwork was a visual-poetic series titled Mother Tongue, pairing original audio clips with morphing AI-generated visuals reflecting cultural symbolism and linguistic structure.

Exhibited At:

• Digital Humanities Conference, Vienna

• Online interactive gallery hosted by UNESCO

Impact:

• Used in classrooms in Chile and Japan for cultural education

• Inspired follow-up funding for similar projects in Africa and Southeast Asia

• Described by educators as “a rare blend of tech, culture, and heart”