IS AI DEGRADING CULTURE, OR
CAN IT HELP TO PRESERVE IT?
October 2025 Dateline: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Advocacy group and guest contributors share their perspectives on AI’s effect on culture at a global level.
Sana Bagersh – Founder of the Global BrainTrust
“The connection between AI and cultural preservation is undeniable because while AI holds incredible potential to amplify human creativity, it also carries a serious risk due to the narrowing of our cultural horizons.
“Realistically speaking, the risk of cultural degradation has started to happen because of the limited datasets and biased frameworks. We are seeing how large language models (LLMs) are trained primarily on Western-centric and English-language data, creating a narrow lens through which global culture is interpreted.
“The homogenization of data means that AI models tend to simplify and standardize information. As a result, nuanced local perspectives are flattened out to fit universal templates, making cultures sound more alike than they are. Subtle ideas, idioms, and philosophies are at risk of being lost in translation, and these are the precise differentiators that need to be preserved.
“Algorithmic bias further exacerbates cultural degradation. When training data lacks diversity, AI systems reproduce cultural and racial biases. For example, an LLM may define “leadership” only through Western corporate ideals, overlooking the communal, spiritual, or indigenous leadership traditions that hold more, or equal importance in other societies.
“As AI-generated summaries and interpretations dominate search results, there’s a cultural authority shift with algorithms becoming our new storytellers. They displace authenticity and give more authority to machine-generated narratives over human ones, subtly reshaping, and even distorting, cultural understanding. The longer these are accepted, and integrated into our notion of culture, the more it will be difficult over time to revise or correct them.
“There’s already a growing danger of language extinction, especially of those languages that are absent from prevailing AI training data. These languages risk disappearing from the digital ecosystem altogether because in today’s interconnected world, being digitally invisible means becoming forgotten.
“I believe fundamentally that artificial intelligence, when built with intention and committed collaboration, can be a powerful guardian and amplifier of cultures. Not the singular ‘culture’ but plural diverse ‘cultures.’ In fact,AI can help document and preserve endangered languages, oral traditions, and historic artifacts, transforming them into accessible digital archives. What was once confined to remote villages or fragile records could become shareable assets across the world, that celebrate our rich diversity.
“With the help of generative AI, cultural storytelling can become a beautiful reality. They can take us on unique experiences and immersive journeys into the past, from virtual museums, multilingual learning platforms to cultural simulations. They can allow new generations to experience traditions and histories rather than merely read about them.
“The only way we can achieve this bold vision is if we have inclusive datasets that don’t privilege a few ‘cultures’ but reflect the full spectrum of identities, values, and worldviews.If guided by ethical design and community input, AI can become the catalyst for cultural preservation that we’ve always needed.But for this to happen cultural experts, linguists, and local communities must be proactively involved in building the datasets that reflect their languages, histories, and artistic expressions. It also means that communities should not just be passive users of data sources but co-creators of it.
“At a policy level, this calls for institutions and organizations to facilitate processes and frameworks to ensure AI systems give proper attribution to human assets, respecting culture, heritage and diversity. By giving visibility to all communities without prejudice and giving equal traction for those that are underrepresented, AI can bridge generational knowledge and ancestral legacy.
“Before any of this happening, humans must take responsibility for teaching our machines not only to think on their own, but to do the remembering for us.”
Brie Alexander – African Diaspora Advisor, The Global BrainTrust
“The loss of cultural identity didn’t begin with AI, but AI is accelerating it. For generations, English and other colonial lingua francas have been imposed through schools and media, conditioning entire societies to equate progress with abandoning their mother tongues. Families, wanting their children to advance, often reinforce this shift, urging them to “speak English” at home.
“Yet with every silenced language, a worldview disappears. UNESCO warns that about one language dies every two weeks, roughly twenty to twenty-five each year, erasing entire archives of ancestral wisdom, humor, and cosmology. Culture doesn’t exist outside language; it lives inside it. When a tongue dies, so does the lens through which a people understand the world.
“AI now sits at the center of this same colonial logic. Trained overwhelmingly on English and a handful of dominant languages, today’s systems replicate the biases of the societies that built them. The worldview of Western coders, largely male, monocultural, and English-first, becomes the default intelligence of the machine. In this new order, linguistic inequality isn’t just mirrored; it’s automated. Models underperform on low-resource languages, translation systems distort metaphors, and speech assistants penalize accents that don’t conform. To sound “intelligent,” users must sound like the algorithm.
“This is cultural erasure in digital form, a soft assimilation disguised as progress. AI not only privileges dominant speech but also flattens artistic, spiritual, and narrative expression. Generative tools trained on Western data often reproduce the same rhythms, imagery, and idioms, crowding out indigenous imagination and regional nuance. Even well-intentioned “cultural heritage” datasets risk repeating colonial bias, archiving what was once misrepresented or deemed primitive. The result is a narrowing of what counts as credible knowledge, a quiet rewriting of reality.
“But this trajectory can change. Cultural survival in the age of AI depends on who builds the code and who owns the data. Communities must steward their own linguistic and cultural archives; builders must include people rooted in diverse traditions; and evaluation must measure not only accuracy, but authenticity and respect. Policies must protect endangered languages, fund low-resource language models, and demand transparency in how cultural data is used.
“AI could become a tool of reclamation, preserving the voices once silenced, digitizing the tongues once shamed. But only if we design it to listen beyond the familiar frequencies of empire. The future of identity depends on whether our machines, like our children, are taught to hear us all.”
Gabriella Kohlberg – Government Development Economic Advisor, The Global BrainTrust
“Multiculturalism and the risks of the degradation of individual cultures have become increasingly present with the globalized world. Artificial Intelligence creates a bigger risk for this challenge being exponentially hastened. It is well known that the outputs of artificial intelligence are only as good as the inputs from its data, and when multiculturalism and mega-corporations have more locations, more advertisements, and more messaging power, AI will only
amplify it.
“There are minimal cultures that are closed enough to protect their cultures, artisans and localized industries and come with a number of restrictions and political risk, and is only enforceable at a certain scale of country / population to remain sustainable. For example, Bhutan is considered a closed culture that protects its culture, environment, values and integrity.
“Bhutan implements this with extremely strict tourism and immigration policy, sets the price for artisan goods extremely high comparative to global prices, limit access by tourists to a very limited geographical region with a local tour guide and tax of over $175 USD a day, is geographically isolated, the media is regulated, architecture is regulated, teaching in the local language and the country is not reliant on trade or international relations as a self-sufficient and sustainably developed independent nation.
“This example shows the number of factors needed to prevent multiculturalism, and with AI and its open nature, it becomes a dilemma of extremities of have or do not have AI and therefore its impacts of marginalization and potential eradication of cultures.
“There are presently limited to non-existent protections of local artisans and limited incentivization to protect indigenous people and cultures, and AI produces imperfect models and results does not inherently have a way to distinguish or verify is something is authentic and protect the information as such. There should be organizations developed for cultural preservation, data integrity and integration and human intervention in AI and more solutions to this upcoming challenge.”
Louay Benabdelali – Well-being Consultant & Author of “Le Côté Plein de la Lune.” (Guest Contributor)
“When I hear the term cultural identity, the first image that comes to mind is sitting with our grandparents, listening to their stories, and engaging in those heartfelt interactions. It’s that human connection, especially with someone older, with whom we share an emotional bond, that truly shapes who we are.
“There’s something deeply meaningful in being able to ask them questions, to hear their experiences, and to feel that exchange of emotion and wisdom. What we’re losing today is precisely that kind of interaction, that emotional, human connection that technology can’t replace.
“Technology, and AI in particular, were meant to make life easier. But not at the expense of what makes us human. AI shouldn’t, for example, create art for us; it should free us from the daily tasks in order to have more time dedicated to create and be within our community: to nurture our relationships, to spend time with loved ones, and to express our humanity.
“If AI starts taking over the very things that make us human: our creativity, our emotions, our capacity to connect, then we risk losing ourselves. That’s the real danger we face now, and it’s growing exponentially.”
Mohamed Rahmo – President and Founder, madNess for Creative Industries.
(Guest Contributor)
“Culture and creativity are not side elements of society; they are the pulse of who we are and the foundation on which nations grow. In the era of artificial intelligence, creative industries and cultural identity will extend, evolve, and accelerate. This is not a new phenomenon; humanity has always redefined expression with every technological shift, from the printing press to photography, film, and the internet.
“AI is simply the next chapter in that long story. Yet, creativity must remain accessible to everyone. Every individual carries a story, a heritage, and a perspective that deserves to be expressed. When education, funding, and creative tools are open and inclusive, culture becomes a shared resource, not a privilege.
“This inclusiveness strengthens social bonds, builds local pride, and creates opportunities for economic growth. Today, creative industries employ nearly 50 million people worldwide and generate over 3 percent of global GDP, according to the UNESCO Culture and Creative Industries Report (2022). These sectors are key drivers of innovation, urban regeneration, and social resilience.
“As noted in The Rise of AI in Creative Industries (Meer, 2024), more than 80 percent of creators already use AI in their work, proof that technology is a partner, not a replacement. However, Channel 4 CEO Alex Mahon warned in The Guardian (2025) that unchecked AI scraping of creative content risks “eroding the value and diversity of national cultures.”
“To protect the essence of creativity, we must ensure that AI enhances, not homogenizes, cultural expression. The goal is clear: to use AI and innovation as tools that democratize creation, not dominate it. Creativity will remain human at its core: emotional, imperfect, and endlessly inventive.”
ENDS