Whispers in the Wires: Rescuing Endangered Languages through Artificial Intelligence

In an era of rapid digital transformation, hundreds of the world's endangered languages face extinction, erasing invaluable cultural knowledge and unique worldviews. This threat is particularly acute for India's unwritten and marginalized tribal languages, which lack digital representation. This research addresses this technological and cultural imperative by proposing a transformative role for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in safeguarding this linguistic heritage. Our primary objective is to establish a scalable, data-driven framework that facilitates the documentation, analysis, and potential revitalization of these vulnerable languages through AI-powered tools. Using a multi-modal approach on a longitudinal archival dataset, our methodology integrated speech recognition, OCR, and translation models. We conducted a comprehensive analysis encompassing phonetic fidelity to map sound systems, semantic accuracy to gauge lexical richness, and cultural context integrity to assess cultural embedding. The study's principal innovation is the introduction of two novel metrics: the Overall Preservation Score (OPS), a holistic index of current language vitality, and the Preservation Risk Index (PRI), a predictive model for future endangerment. These indices provide an evidence-based, quantitative tool for moving beyond subjective assessments. Our findings successfully stratified the analyzed languages into distinct risk categories and revealed a critical correlation between the quality of documentation and language transmission to younger generations. Ultimately, this work delivers an actionable toolkit for policymakers, linguists, and communities to guide preservation efforts. It demonstrates that when ethically aligned with cultural sensitivity, AI can become a powerful and indispensable ally in reversing language extinction, ensuring that marginalized voices are preserved for the future.