The Governance Gap in AI for Minoritized Languages
On 14 September 2026, I gave a guest lecture, "The Governance Gap in AI for Minoritized Languages," opening a working meeting of the AI Ad Hoc Committee of PLURILINGMEDIA, a COST Action on media in Europe's regional and minority languages.
When an AI system performs badly in a minoritized language, hardly anyone can do anything about it: not the individual speaker, not the language community, not the state. Two EU instruments come up short. The AI Act is binding and enforceable but says nothing about language. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages names language as a protected interest but has no enforcement behind it.
I wrapped up with three recommendations: one turns on a regulator's interpretive choice, one on the AI Act review already scheduled for 2028, and one on a registration mechanism that has never been applied to language.
The committee moved straight from the lecture into planning its October meeting, so the aim was to leave them with something to draft.
This talk stems from another one I gave in June in Warsaw, entitled Who Governs the Spoken Word?
