United Kingdom, Sept. 5 -- African researchers have created what is believed to be the largest dataset of indigenous languages on the continent, aiming to ensure millions of people are not excluded from advances in artificial intelligence such as chatbots.

Although Africa is home to more than a quarter of the world's languages, most of them are missing from the development of AI.

The majority of tools, such as ChatGPT, are trained primarily on English, European and Chinese languages, which benefit from vast amounts of online text.

But many African languages are spoken more often than written, leaving little material to train AI systems and limiting their usefulness for speakers across the continent.

Professor Vukosi Marivate who teach...