Without local languages, ‘AI is essentially useless’: Hong Kong’s Votee AI is taking on English and Mandarin’s AI dominance with a Cantonese model

The AI boom is currently dominated by models trained on English and Mandarin Chinese from companies based in the U.S. or mainland China, neglecting countless languages like Cantonese. Votee AI, a Hong Kong-based startup, aims to address this oversight by retraining open-weight models using specialized Cantonese data for local applications. By utilizing sources such as Radio Television Hong Kong content and synthetic datasets, Votee provides critical functionality, ensuring that the technology can be used in sectors like healthcare and education.