Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force Guidance on AI and Interpreting Services

Stakeholders Advocating for Fair and Ethical AI in Interpreting

Mission and Vision

Our mission is to protect the integrity of communication between principal communicators during any interpreted interaction by developing standards for responsive AI systems and setting performance benchmarks for human-only, machine-only, and combined human and machine interpreting solutions.

Our vision is that sign language and spoken language equity will be integral to the global technology landscape, and that we will be recognized as an authority for setting standards, certifying technology, and advocating for the inclusion of all sign and spoken languages.

The Mission and Vision were jointly developed by the Coalition for Sign Language Equity in Technology (CoSET) and the Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force.

Interpreting SAFE AI Task Force Guidance on AI and Interpreting Services

This comprehensive guide describes fundamental sociolinguistic criteria for the safe, fair and ethical development and implementation of automatic interpreting products using artificial intelligence (AIxAI), also called machine interpreting.

Our Objectives

  • Document the state of the AI capabilities in real-time language interpretation which includes speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, multilingual captioning, and translation captioning.
  • Identify key use cases where AI is being or could soon be applied to conference, medical, legal, educational, business and other settings.
  • Identify the positive and negative impacts in these use cases.
  • Create best practice guidance for each specialization, identifying key use cases for where AI is appropriate and where it is not appropriate, based on risk analysis. (For example, when does speech-to-speech replacement of a simultaneous interpreter for an event expand multilingual access safely vs. where the dangers are too high?)
  • Best practice guidance will also be targeted by qualified practitioners, buyers, vendors, training/academic organizations and end-users.
  • Disseminate and promote the findings.

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