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On July 21st, Microsoft announced new steps to support Europe’s digital future by ensuring AI better reflects Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity. Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President Brad Smith outlines this in a blog post, focusing on how to make AI more inclusive of Europe’s 24 official languages and rich cultural heritage.

What was announced? First, to help close the AI language gap, we have placed teams in Strasbourg, France (a historic crossroads of cultures) to expand the availability of multilingual data for AI training. In partnership with organizations like Hugging Face and Common Crawl, these teams will work with European researchers to make more language data openly accessible and to empower developers to create local AI models. Microsoft will also fund projects to increase digital content for 10 underrepresented European languages, for example Estonian, Slovak, and Maltese, so that these languages are better supported in AI.

Second, we are expanding our Culture AI initiative to help digitally preserve Europe’s cultural landmarks. Our next project – in partnership with the French Ministry of Culture and heritage experts at the French firm Iconem – will create a detailed digital replica of Notre-Dame de Paris, the newly restored 862-year-old cathedral. By using AI and 3D imaging to capture every detail, we will ensure Notre-Dame’s structure and story are protected and accessible for future generations. This builds on earlier Microsoft projects that digitally preserved sites like Ancient Olympia in Greece and St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

Why does it matter? Many European languages are missing from the data used to train today’s AI, which means AI tools often don’t fully understand the people, cultures, and businesses they should serve. Closing these language gaps is key to economic growth and innovation in Europe. In fact, only 13.5% of EU businesses currently use AI, and the European Commission estimates that breaking down language barriers in the single market could boost intra-EU trade by up to €360 billion. By investing in multilingual AI, we aim to spur wider AI adoption across Europe’s economies and ensure every community can benefit. At the same time, Europe’s diverse cultural heritage is a source of strength and identity. Using AI to safeguard historic sites and artifacts (like Notre-Dame) will help protect Europe’s legacy and make it accessible in new ways – for education, tourism, research, and future innovation.

These announcements are part of our European Digital Commitments, announced by Brad Smith earlier this year, to expand AI and cloud infrastructure, strengthen digital resilience and data privacy protections, enhance cybersecurity, and support Europe’s digital sovereignty and broader economy. We undertake the work announced this week in close collaboration with European partners and with full respect for European values and leadership. None of the data or technology we develop will be proprietary to Microsoft – the goal is to empower local experts and institutions across Europe. As Brad noted, preserving Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity is ultimately a task for Europeans to lead, and we are here to support those efforts.