The Yegatu Digital Project: Fostering Digital Writing in and with Indigenous Communities in the Amazon

The Yegatu Digital Project: Fostering Digital Writing in and with Indigenous Communities in the Amazon

We invite you to attend the second lecture of the Crisis and Memory: Digital Oral History Laboratory, dedicated to the Yegatu Digital Project, a result of the collaboration between IBM Research Brazil and the University of São Paulo.

The project uses digital and AI-based tools to foster the use of indigenous languages that are in danger of disappearing. These tools include:

• Spell checkers
• Next-word predictors
• Dictionaries

They are co-designed and co-developed with Indigenous communities from the Baré ethnicity in the Amazon.

The initiative involves digital classrooms deployed in two communities in July 2025. The lecture will address:

• Motivations behind the project
• Ethical considerations
• Future expansion to other communities

Speaker

Professor Claudio Pinhanez

Claudio Pinhanez received his PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory in 1999 and has worked at IBM Research since then in areas such as computer vision, social media analytics, and natural language processing. He is currently a Principal Scientist at IBM Research Brazil and Deputy Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence at the University of São Paulo.

Event Details

• Date & Time: November 5, 2025, 17:00
• Venue: IAE, 15 Charents St. (3rd floor)
• Language: English (with Armenian translation)