What does “stopping linguistic colonialism in Africa” have in common with ChatGPT and AI stealing the work of millions of artists? 

One is a crime that happened in the past, and one is a crime that’s about to happen in the future. 

Open.AI stealing millions of works of art on the internet was the biggest art heist in the history of humankind. And so far, they’ve gotten away with it. Every lawsuit has failed. Open AI started as a not-for-profit to benefit humankind, and quietly became a vicious for-profit. 

“OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a not-for-profit. As Forbes cited last year, OpenAI is now “unambiguously profit driven.” This is symbolic of many trends in AI – tools that start out as mission-driven applications until their creators get greedy.”

As our research is showing, we can see this same predatory colonialism about to happen in Africa, with endangered languages, as no one has slated to pay for data from language contributors. 

The Tusoma Project proposes that we join forces – artists for Africans, and Africans for artists.