AI-Driven Adi Vaani Expands Reach of Tribal Languages, Promotes Digital Inclusion

Photo: IANS

New Delhi: An artificial intelligence-powered language platform, Adi Vaani, is emerging as an important initiative to bridge India's digital divide by making technology and digital services more accessible to tribal communities in their native languages.

Initially launched with support for Santali, Bhili, Mundari and Gondi, the platform has expanded its text translation capabilities to nine tribal languages, according to a government factsheet released on Sunday.

Launched by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs on September 1, 2025, Adi Vaani was developed through a national consortium led by IIT Delhi. The consortium includes BITS Pilani, IIIT Hyderabad, IIIT Naya Raipur and Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) from Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya. Several other state-level TRIs have subsequently joined the initiative, strengthening its nationwide collaboration.

Beyond text translation, the platform offers speech translation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), video subtitling and access to more than 300 language primers. These primers are basic learning materials designed to help beginners understand and practise tribal languages, making the platform useful for both language learners and native speakers.

Its growing adoption reflects increasing interest in technology-driven language accessibility. The platform has recorded more than 35,000 downloads on Android devices and attracts approximately 6,500 monthly users, the factsheet said.

A key feature of Adi Vaani is its community-driven approach to developing language resources. Native speakers contribute words, sentences and voice recordings through Tribal Research Institutes and AdiKosh. Language experts verify the submissions before they are incorporated into datasets used to train the artificial intelligence models.

The initiative aims to gather approximately one lakh sentence pairs and 100 hours of speech recordings for each language. As of October 15, 2026, state TRIs had contributed around 13.9 lakh text sentences across ten languages, along with approximately 300 hours of speech data.

The development process follows five phases for each language, beginning with data collection and progressing towards integration into the platform. The AI models are periodically retrained as additional contributions come from communities, allowing the system to improve its ability to recognise and translate regional linguistic expressions.

By combining artificial intelligence with knowledge contributed by native speakers, Adi Vaani seeks to address a major challenge in India's digital ecosystem: the limited availability of digital resources in tribal languages. Its applications extend beyond translation to potentially supporting education, communication, language learning and the preservation of indigenous linguistic heritage.

According to Census 2011 data, India has approximately 10.45 crore Scheduled Tribe people, accounting for nearly 8.6 per cent of the country's population. The platform currently works with a total of 13 tribal languages across different regions, reflecting an effort to make digital technology more inclusive while strengthening the preservation and everyday use of indigenous languages.