Galim Turumtaev on Empowering Communities Through Language Tech

In this AI for Good special of Digitel Talk, host Ian Ginn speaks with Galim Turumtaev, a machine learning engineer and the visionary behind Homai—a grassroots project reviving endangered languages using AI and speech technology.Broadcast live from the AI for Good Summit, this episode explores how Galim’s work is reconnecting communities with their cultural roots through smart speakers, speech models, and locally digitised content. By building language tools for Bashkir and nine other minority languages, Homai is turning AI into a powerful tool for preservation, identity, and education.Discover how tech can protect what makes us human.Links and resources:Homai AI for Good SummitInnovation Factory (ITU)Glidance Mobility Solutions Episode sponsored by IFG Consulting Europe– Supporting telcos with tech strategy, digitisation and growth.Guest bio:ML Engineer and founder of Homai, Aygiz Kunafin, started this project in 2020 to help his four children speak more in their native Bashkir language. The original idea was to create a smart speaker that could talk about Bashkir culture and history in the Bashkir language.I joined the project in 2023 as an ML engineer with experience in speech synthesis and speech recognition, driven by my passion to support my native language, Bashkir.At Homai, we quickly realized that many other languages face similar challenges. That’s why we decided to expand our project to support more languages. This led to the launch of Homai in Malta. Now, we are building a platform where anyone can digitize their language without technical barriers, using the knowledge base and toolkit we developed while working on the Bashkir language smart speaker.Podcast credits:Host: Ian GinnGuest: Galim TurumtaevEditor: Francis WrightDesigner: Rebecca GinnProject manager: Ivana DuricSend us your feedbackFollow Digitel Talk Want to be a guest on the show or sponsor a podcast? For all enquires contact [email protected] you liked this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5* review and rating, it really helps our channel.You can find us on LinkedIn @digitel-talk or on our website www.digiteltalk.com

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