Māori Text-to-Speech Model Spurns Big Tech’s Values

New Zealand is a country famed for its dramatic landscapes, but its linguistic landscape is arguably just as interesting. Of its three official languages, only te reo Māori (the Māori language) could be described as indigenous. Though spoken fluently by just 4.3 percent of the population, national statistics show that about 30 percent of New Zealanders can speak more than a few words or phrases of the language. But ask ChatGPT to write te reo Māori and it will oblige, fluently answering your questions in the standardized form of the language taught in schools and broadcast on national television. Claude and Perplexity can do the same. This impressive language performance is built on text and audio produced by Māori communities and academics, which was scraped and ingested without their permission, processed outside New Zealand, and returned to users through interfaces owned by large technology companies. For Māori, that is a…