With more than 10 million speakers, Quechua is the most spoken native language on our continent, with presence in seven countries including Argentina. However, Quechua speakers are not taken into account in many areas of society, especially in technology. Now Kipi, a bilingual robot, and a virtual news anchor, Illariy, could change things.
Kipi is an invention of teacher Walter Velásquez, who, in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, was faced with the challenge of continuing with classes in the third year of high school in the district of Colcabamba, Peru. Isolated from the rest of the country, education had to continue in an area where only 12.4% of homes had Internet access and the majority of residents never used social networks or instant messengers like WhatsApp.
Velásquez’s idea was, then, create something that would attract teenagers to school regardless. This is how this Quechua-speaking robot made from recycled materials and scrap metal was born. The machine represents an Andean girl and was not only programmed to say phrases in that language but was loaded with information about the specific habits and customs of the region, such as the making of chuño.
The machine represents an Andean girl who not only says phrases in Quechua but also has specific information.
Kipi does not join the classes as a teacher or as a reference who teaches but as another student, making her participation and interaction with adolescents even more interesting. This original approach was the great success of Velásquez, who has been leading courses and classes for more than 13 years.
The robot became so popular that it began traveling to other cities and communities. To do so, along winding roads, she was tied to the back of a donkey and a backpack with photovoltaic panels was placed on her, since Kipi works exclusively with solar energy to avoid depending on electricity.
On these tours, Velásquez, 33, realized that his invention could help with more than just attracting teenagers to classrooms. So, He understood that he could also preserve the native languages of the Peruvian Amazon and began to add audiobooks, stories, poems and other stories to his collection, in addition to recording the inhabitants in languages such as Asháninka.
The virtual news anchor
Illariy Willarisunki, meanwhile, is an application that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 engine to tell stories in Quechua and was created by students from the Faculty of Communications of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
The app, in turn, served as the basis for the creation of Illariy, a virtual news presenter who hosts a daily broadcast with the most relevant information of the day in Quechua, offering an attractive alternative for millions of people.
UNESCO estimates that by the year 2100, half of the languages currently spoken in the world could be extinct or at serious risk of disappearance. In the special case of Peru, of the 48 recognized indigenous languages, 21 currently face an imminent risk of extinction. And in our country it is estimated that there are more than twenty indigenous peoples who speak at least fourteen languages.