AI offers powerful uses for First Nations oral cultural knowledge. Here’s how

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names and images of deceased persons.

Much of the discussion about artificial intelligence (AI) and indigenous peoples focuses on harms such as cultural appropriation, cultural flattening and digital exclusion. These risks are real.

But behind this lies an assumption that is rarely questioned: because Aboriginal cultures are ancient, they must be static. Firmly rooted in the past to stay there. That they can’t adapt to something as disruptive as generative AI.

This misinterprets tens of thousands of years of history. And it ignores something that our work with traditional owners in the Kimberley, Western Australia, has made increasingly clear: Indigenous cultures are not only capable of adapting to AI – the way they have always held and shared knowledge can make them natural users of it.

“Say it right”

When I (Liz) started working with Wororra people in Kimberley…