🗣️Turkey’s Laz language gets an AI lifeline

The Istanbul-based Laz Institute is recruiting volunteers to train AI in the language through Mozilla’s Common Voice program, creating a digital archive that could preserve a language increasingly under threat of extinction.

Samuel Wendel
Samuel Wendel
Nov 25, 2025
A villager stands at a high point to survey the damage to the hill sides by quarrying in Ikizdere in the Rize Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey on June 7, 2021.

Welcome back to Al-Monitor FutureVerse.

Last week produced a torrent of tech headlines for the Middle East, most of them centered on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s high-profile US visit. We explore that and more in this edition, including an effort to use artificial intelligence to keep a disappearing language alive in Turkey.

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Sam (@sam_wendel)

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