Case Study: Miðeind ehf helps preserve Icelandic and power fluent Icelandic AI with OpenAI

How Iceland is using GPT-4 to preserve its language

The Government of Iceland, in partnership with a private industry team led by the language technology company Miðeind ehf, faced the challenge of preserving the Icelandic language from de facto extinction in the digital age. Their specific issue was that OpenAI’s GPT models, which are predominantly trained on major languages, produced poor, grammatically incorrect, and culturally unaware Icelandic, preventing its use in everyday applications.

OpenAI provided its GPT-4 model and collaborated on a solution using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). A team of volunteers from Miðeind generated and refined ideal Icelandic responses to train the model, which became significantly more capable with far less data than previous methods. This process has improved GPT-4's Icelandic fluency and cultural accuracy, enabling local companies to deploy Icelandic-language services and helping to ensure the language's survival and use in modern technology.

Miðeind ehf

Vilhjálmur Þorsteinsson

Chief Executive