Artificial intelligence is reshaping roles, jobs, and entire societies. These special systems don’t just learn and automate; they are becoming collaborative partners that integrate into daily life.

For organizations and nations alike, staying a step ahead means mastering AI and using it to leverage quality of life.

What about Morocco? Where do we stand in this global trend? How do we ensure AI systems are serving us authentically? And how can Darija Models shape the future around us?

How AI models shape societies

AI is no longer a simple tool; it is more of an infrastructure layer that affects the workflows, decisions, and labor. Its impact echoes through society in several ways:

• Knowledge transformation: AI handles the training, learning, and processing to give humans the right chances to research, innovate, and create.
• Labor evolution: It eliminates repetitive work and offers intelligent help with copilots across all industries. AI is redefining productivity from healthcare to the arts, passing by education, finance, and so on.
• Decision-making improvement: Its ability to process and analyze large data sets makes it easy to synthesize insights and results. What would take humans months now takes a minute, improving the quality and speed of decision-making.

Overall, AI shapes societies directly. And only those with higher-quality, more precise data receive better AI representation.

We’ve met with our guest, Oumayma, a data scientist and AI researcher, to uncover the answer, which she believes to be ”embedding Darija with AI”.

Why do we need to have AI Darija Models?

Edward Sapir, the famous linguist-anthropologist, observed that language is not just a communication tool but a guide to social reality. He states that the vocabulary and metaphors mirror cultural priorities, and a language is a living cultural system that becomes a map of what matters.

Linguists and anthropologists have always argued that language is not simply a set of words, but a repository of cultural norms. You can translate words from one language to another, but you cannot fully transport the deeper meanings and emotional resonances.

The integration of AI in societies is no different. For AI to effectively serve Moroccan individuals and businesses, it must think like them first. Darija Models then becomes a necessity, a gateway to integrate AI across all segments of society.

Making AI accessible for everyone

When developing a national technology strategy, it’s clever to keep in mind broad accessibility to maximize exposure. And studying Morocco's demographics shows exactly why:

• Significant rural populations with limited access to French or English education
• Elderly citizens more comfortable in their mother tongue
• Small business owners and entrepreneurs who think and operate in Darija
• Simply, the majority of citizens who express themselves more comfortably in Darija

In her latest project, Oumayma has set a goal with her team to make AI accessible for everyone.

Picture a farmer in the mountains using a chatbot to learn about the weather news, or a street vendor in Marrakech implementing the Darija AI assistant to manage his orders. Darija AI becomes a real equalizer for the benefits of artificial intelligence.

Is it a matter of national pride or effectiveness?

Yes, working on such projects can be a source of national pride, but that is not the main objective. The purpose goes beyond pride, it is about serving people. The true driver is practical impact, productivity, and cultural relevance.

Moroccan Darija AI models can:

• Transform customer service by automation
• Democratize access to services for non-French/English speakers
• Enhance productivity and daily tasks
• Preserve and highlight the cultural heritage that the words hold
• Create economic opportunities with new AI projects

Darija is often dismissed as just a dialect, while it signals recognition, adapts systems to users, and accelerates the adoption of AI in sectors, and more importantly, it becomes an infrastructure for economics and growth.

What Role Should Moroccan Stakeholders Play?

In fact, if we don’t invest in Darija AI models now, the cost will be high.

While nations like the UAE invest billions in AI infrastructure and countries like France develop language-specific models, Morocco risks being left behind if AI isn't prioritized.

With that being said, building a Darija AI ecosystem requires coordinated effort across multiple sectors:

The government needs to take the lead by funding research institutions focused on Darija AI, creating national datasets of Darija linguistics, and establishing clear frameworks that encourage this innovation.

The private sector, on the other hand, can contribute by investing, partnering with universities, and directly integrating Darija models into products to test and evaluate.

The academic side has an equally critical role. From research and dataset building to international collaborations, research institutions must prioritize Darija models.

“We are working on a strategy that trains AI models with a large Darija dataset, willing to make it open-source to benefit future developers,” Oumayma explains. “Our work is sincere, but it will only scale and show results with the right sponsors and support. Training and teaching machines is a pricy procedure that requires serious budgets and investment from those who trust the vision.”

Our turn to decide

The future of Morocco in the age of AI depends on our decisions. We can actively shape how AI integrates into our society or passively accept models built for other cultures, missing the accuracy and our real priorities.

The choice is clear: Investing in Darija AI models is not optional; it's a crucial step for cultural preservation, technology integration, and economic competitiveness. This field holds precious opportunities for our country, and with our talents, we should commit.

Watch the interview with Oumayma to know more about her work bridging Darija and AI.