Gaelic AI Projects and the Wrong Inbox

If you’re serious about Gaelic AI—or AI in any minority language—work in collaboration with the central hub.

My inbox has been busy. Not with student questions or project collaborations I’ve signed up for—but with recruiters contacting me about AI projects that have little to do with what I actually provide. Translation. Editing. Generic “AI services.” On the surface, it looks flattering: “We thought of you for this opportunity.” But a quick glance shows they haven’t checked whether my business actually offers those services. Spoiler: we don’t.

This scattergun approach isn’t just inefficient, it’s wasteful. Instead of finding the right fit for a project, recruiters are firing off messages hoping something sticks. It feels like the AI boom is fuelling not only new projects, but also new layers of noise.

And then there’s the irony: how many Gaelic AI projects are there, really? Not many. Gaelic is a niche language, with unique needs. Yet I’ve had multiple requests around “Gaelic AI,” all vague, all without any clear sense of whether the infrastructure, data, or expertise even exists for what they’re asking.

The bigger question: Why not centralize it?

If you’re serious about Gaelic AI—or AI in any minority language—work in collaboration with the central hub. ÈIST is the real deal: funded, collaborative, and already delivering tech that serves Gaelic media, education, and—soon—any developer who wants to build on Gaelic speech recognition. A space where:

• projects can be listed clearly

• businesses and specialists can signal their actual expertise

• collaboration can happen with less noise, more intention
  

Right now, the landscape is fragmented: a recruiter here, a researcher there, a business asked to do work they never claimed to provide. The result? Slowed progress and a lot of frustrated people.

The Gaelic community already knows what happens when effort is scattered: resources get stretched thin, progress stalls, and a few people carry too heavy a load, volunteer fatique sets in. If AI is going to play any role in supporting endangered languages, the same lesson applies.

So here’s my take: recruiters, do your homework. And for those genuinely exploring AI in Gaelic—contact the central hub first. Otherwise, we’ll keep burning energy on mismatched requests instead of on the real, rare, and valuable work that actually needs doing.