Kiwa Digital, an Indigenous-owned company in Aotearoa New Zealand, works to preserve endangered languages and revitalise Indigenous cultures. Many of these languages are critically at risk, with only a handful of speakers and fragmented documentation scattered across transcripts, recordings, and videos. Traditional methods weren’t scalable or engaging enough to sustain revitalisation.

Kiwa needed a future-proof way to safeguard cultural knowledge while also making it interactive, accessible, and aligned with Indigenous principles of sovereignty and guardianship.

Caitlyn was embedded into CultureQ, Kiwa’s cultural learning platform, as a fully branded, white-labelled generative AI assistant. Instead of static archives, communities can now interact with their heritage through conversation.

Key elements of the solution include:

• Conversational Cultural AI
  Processes text, audio, and video, enabling natural language interaction with cultural content.

• Context-Aware Learning
  Recognises cultural nuance and meaning, from the layers of “haka” to the sacredness of tapu knowledge.

• Revitalisation Tools
  Features like voice generation and text-to-speech support the revitalisation of endangered languages in modern contexts.

• Guardrails for Sovereignty
  No product recommendations, no hidden data usage — respecting Indigenous data governance at every level.