Microsoft announces Project Gecko to make AI more inclusive and culturally aware

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Microsoft has announced Project Gecko, a new research initiative aimed at making artificial intelligence more inclusive and useful for people across the world — especially in regions where technology often struggles to understand local languages and cultures.

While generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot have become popular worldwide, they still work best for communities well-represented online. In countries where low-resource languages dominate, AI models often fail to deliver accurate or culturally relevant responses. Microsoft’s Project Gecko hopes to change that by creating affordable, customizable AI systems designed to work in multiple languages, through text, voice, and video.

The project is being led by Microsoft Research, with teams from India, Africa, and the U.S. working together, along with Digital Green, a global non-profit focused on digital solutions for agriculture. Their first focus area is farming, a sector that sustains millions of people but often lacks access to timely and trusted information.

At the center of this initiative is a new AI system called MMCTAgent, which can understand speech, images, and videos to provide context-aware answers. This technology powers FarmerChat, a voice-first AI assistant that helps small farmers in India and Kenya get personalized guidance in their local languages. For example, a farmer can ask a question in Swahili or Hindi and receive short video clips that show solutions to crop or pest problems — starting exactly where the relevant information appears in the video.

Unlike large AI systems that demand huge computing power, Microsoft’s team is using small language models (SLMs) that are lighter, more efficient, and easier to train on local data. These models are built from scratch to support speech recognition and translation in underrepresented languages such as Swahili, Kikuyu, Hindi, and Kalenjin.

According to Microsoft, Project Gecko is part of its broader mission to develop globally equitable AI — technology that reflects the experiences, languages, and cultures of the communities it serves. The company plans to expand the project beyond agriculture into education and healthcare, helping more people access AI that truly understands them.

As Microsoft’s researchers put it, Project Gecko is about building AI “from the ground up,” ensuring that the next wave of innovation speaks everyone’s language — not just a privileged few.