NEW DELHI, Aug. 31 -- The Union government has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered language platform seeking to include tribal communities in the country's digital transformation by getting hundreds of tribal languages online and providing benefits to people in their own languages. India has more than 700 tribal communities and over 100 tribal languages and dialects. Yet only a small proportion of these languages have a script, dictionary or substantial digital presence. AdiVaani, developed under the ministry of tribal affairs in collaboration with IIT Delhi, enables translation and transcription between Hindi, English and tribal languages through text and speech. The platform currently supports Santali, Mundari, Bhili and Gondi, with Kui and Garo among the languages being taken up next. Its next phase envisages adding 10 more languages, significantly expanding verified speech recordings, with collections expected to run into thousands of samples for individual languages. The initiative is aimed at making government services, healthcare information, educational material and other digital resources accessible to people in languages they use in everyday life...