Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on User Understanding of Indigenous Cultures

By:  Owen Jenkins. Owen's personal beliefs about human rights extends to an evolving understanding of indigenous rights, the past and present ways in which our nation has failed indigenous communities, and the ways in which we can pave a way forward that is equitable and just.

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With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there has been increasing concern about the integrity and reliability of AI, and the accuracy of the information that emerges from the pool of data from which AI generates the information that is then passed on to users. When someone submits a prompt, it takes information from a vast amount of varied  and sometimes conflicting inputs across the internet, with some corners of the web being filled with racist and sexist articles and ideologies. When users get their information from AI generated prompts, they are fed what they perceive to be convincing evidence to support their claim.

Individuals that post their opinion, whether factual or not, onto online platforms have an influence on AI’s understanding and resulting output. This leaves open the potential for misinformation to spread like wildfire across the web, influencing AI’s understanding of the world that we live in today. While the terms of service for many social media platforms allow for posts to be flagged for misinformation, there’s a vast amount of information being shared that will go undetected. AI technology can therefore be used to harm Indigenous culture, given how, for tens of decades, Indigenous People have been poorly represented in movies and media, to name a few, and this failure to accurately portray and represent indigenous culture and history will have an affect on how AI then perceives native people and culture, and more easily pass on misinformation to the public through AI inquiry.

In an AI generation study, a man by the name of Sean Dudley had been generating how AI views what it thinks a Native American town looks like. When generating a Southwest American town, it showed a modern looking town 70 miles from Tuba City, which is the biggest social group in the Navajo Nation, with modern cars and neatly kept roadways. However, when they put in the same prompt with Tuba City, the AI image that was generated looked dilapidated, with junky old cars, dirt roads, and sheds for houses, compared to the more modern and thriving look for first prompt. This study shows how severely biased opinions about native culture can sneak into AI prompts. In reality, Tuba City is a mixture of beautiful landscapes, historic structures, and small town houses. Nothing like the sad image that AI generated for this study. This kind of misinformation can alter the way that we come to understand an entire group of people and culture (Dudley et al, 2024).

AI, however, is not always a bad tool. In other ways AI supports the proliferation of information that can be useful for enhancing our understanding of indigenous culture. For example, it can be used to keep Indigenous languages alive. This would mean a lot for linguistic revival for languages that have become endangered. In an analysis by Dr. Jared Coleman, a translation tool developer at Loyola Marymount University, he says “For endangered, no-resource languages, creating translators is challenging, and accuracy is even more critical … for this reason, our goal isn’t to produce perfect translations but to generate accurate ones that closely capture the user’s intended meaning.” The other side of that coin, however, is closely related to the previously stated concern that AI may not accurately present the language and interpretations as truth, in the event that misinformation is spread consistently across the internet (Jiang, 2025).

The world is changing quickly and with it our use of technology. As with our past, we are accountable for how we remember and understand each other in this world. This responsibility rests on the shoulders of each individual, and therefore we must be cognizant of the ways in which we rely on and trust in the technologies that shape our understanding of the world.


References
 

• Maynard, A., Kuslikis, A., Dudley, S., & Bruce, L. (2024, December 15). Advanced AI is creating challenges for Native American communities – but also opportunities. The Future of Being Human. https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/advanced-ai-challenges-opportunities-native-american-communities
• Artificial intelligence and Indigenous peoples’ realities. (2024, March 19). Cultural Survival. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/artificial-intelligence-and-indigenous-peoples-realities
• Jiang, M. (2025, March 3). Preserving the Past: AI in Indigenous Language Preservation. Viterbi Conversations in Ethics. https://vce.usc.edu/weekly-news-profile/preserving-the-past-ai-in-indigenous-language-preservation

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