On the occasion of World Indigenous Day, observed to celebrate and assert the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples—and with this year’s theme, “Indigenous Peoples and AI: Defending Rights, Shaping Futures”—we would like to draw your attention to some of the work undertaken by the Council for Diversity and Innovation and our close collaborator, UnReal TecE LLP, in advancing Indigenous concerns and causes towards an AI-enabled future for all.

We have consistently spoken, written, and raised awareness about how the current market-driven AI ecosystem, particularly within the dominant GPT landscape, is inherently exclusive. This ecosystem, with its focus on scale and market logics, systematically marginalises Indigenous communities, denying them equitable participation and representation in shaping AI futures.

As part of our effort to understand how exclusion operates in the digital and GPT age, we, within the Council for Diversity and Innovation and UnReal TecE LLP, engage in research, advocacy, and tool development that foreground Indigenous participation in AI futures.

In line with this commitment, we recently published a paper in the ACL Anthology presenting our field-to-model pipeline, which demonstrates our integrated approach to data collection and model building. This work showcases our LiFE Suite tools as an example of how technology can be designed with community ownership and agency at its core. Similarly, our upcoming paper, offering both a critique of existing frameworks and an alternative participatory approach, has been accepted for presentation at the South Asian Languages Analysis Round Table (SALA) 39 in Poznań.

We also implement an on-ground complement to our LiFE Suite pipeline, investing in training infrastructure that counters exclusion and democratises the skills required to prepare Indigenous languages for a future-ready, AI-ready ecosystem. As part of this effort, under the Words, Worlds, and Models program, we address the critical shortage of trained professionals capable of collecting high-quality linguistic data. The program builds on our community-driven approach and fosters ethical engagement with Indigenous communities, ensuring participants operate with both legal compliance and moral responsibility.

This program also brings together community members, linguists, and other professionals to collaboratively build these models, ensuring that technical expertise and lived knowledge work hand in hand.

In addition to the papers and tools we have developed with UnReal TecE LLP, Council members have worked extensively with state and central governments in India as well as with non-governmental organisations in various consultancy roles, supporting both state-led and people-led initiatives.

Our work has included collaborations with grassroots eco-organisations and NGOs, integrating community-based social action with Indigenous language technology and AI development. For example, we have partnered with the Keystone Foundation to align language technology development and AI readiness with community centre action.

Council members also serve as consultants to various national and state institutions, helping to design and implement programs aimed at promoting multilingualism and combating digital exclusion, particularly for communities whose languages and voices are often left out of the mainstream technology ecosystem.

The Council for Diversity and Innovation, along with partners from across sectors, is committed to shaping an AI future where every voice counts.