Ministers have set out a trio of top priorities to support the growth of Cymraeg, including enabling improvements to online spelling and grammar checkers, as well as large language models

Welsh Government ministers have pledged to deploy technology around the country to support the growth and widespread use of the Welsh language.

To do so, the devolved administration will pursue three priorities, the first of which is to use tech “to increase the daily use” of Welsh – or Cymraeg. According to a written statement from cabinet secretary for finance and Cymraeg Mark Drakeford, the government believes that “technology can make it easier to use Welsh in all aspects of life, from education and work, to social interactions”.

This will include greater use of the ‘Iaith Gwaith’ logo that indicates visitors to a website or digital service can use the Welsh language, if they wish, as well as efforts to ensure that online spelling and grammar tools are regularly updated.

“We’ll work with universities, procurement and tendering systems and companies big and small,” Drakeford added. “We’ll also work to ensure that Welsh-speaking children, young people, and adults and learners feel safe and protected from harmful content when they use technology in Welsh.”

The second priority set out by government is “making sure everyone can access Welsh-language technology”. Key to this ambition will be ensuring that this tech “reaches developers and end users”, as well as efforts to “make it easier for parents and teachers to support children’s Welsh language education”.

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The last of ministers three core objectives is “improving Welsh language artificial intelligence – and speech and language technologies – by sharing data and other means”.

This will include collaboration with some of the world’s most prominent tech firms, according to Drakeford.

“Large Language Models… used by AI, rely on large amounts of training data,” he wrote. “We’ve already taken steps to share data with AI projects like AINA, led by the Government of Catalonia, and under our partnership with OpenAI. We’ll keep sharing and we’ll encourage others to share their content to improve AI and all other technologies in Welsh. Working together with Microsoft, we’ve already developed simultaneous human interpretation on Teams, and we’ve worked to improve how Copilot—Microsoft’s latest AI tool—processes the Welsh language. And we’ll carry on working with big tech companies, and small tech too. We want to encourage a home-grown community of tech developers and tech companies too of course.”

Updates on the Welsh language tech initiative will be published on a dedicated web page on the gov.wales site.

Drakeford added: “Cymraeg belongs to us all and I want us all to use whatever Welsh we have, and we’ll create the technology to help make that happen.”