Hong Kong-based tech firm Votee AI aims to replicate its model for other low-resource languages in Southeast Asia and Africa
4-MIN READ4-MIN ListenHolly ChikPublished: 9:00am, 1 Apr 2026Preserving Cantonese has been challenging due to the dominance of Mandarin, limited learning resources and a lack of a standard written form. With a declining number of young learners, the language faces an uncertain future.Artificial intelligence (AI) – seen by some as an existential threat to humanity – may become the hope for saving the language, and many others, along with the distinct cultures they embody.This is the mission of Hong Kong-based deep-tech company Votee AI: to use large language models (LLMs) to preserve languages, especially those overlooked by tech giants.
Leo Ma, Votee’s chief scientist for the Asia-Pacific, said in an interview that AI could create living records of many languages beyond English – the primary language for most LLMs today.
Unlike Mandarin, English or Spanish, which have vast troves of digital text for AI training, Cantonese lacks written text that accurately reflects how it is spoken.
