Research

📍 Kulturhaus Helferei

Tainá

GainForest

David Dao

Only 1% of global biodiversity data comes from the world’s largest rainforests - and the communities protecting them rarely control the technology built from their knowledge. «Tainá» changes that. Developed with Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, «Tainá» is an AI assistant that keeps cultural and ecological knowledge with the people who created it. Community members share recordings, images, and videos - basketry, medicinal plants, oral stories only elders still carry. «Tainá» learns from this input and responds in local languages. All Data stays local. Communities decide what is private and what gets shared. Each community writes its own values shaping how their «Tainá» behaves - what it prioritises, what it refuses, what matters. «Tainá» is built by GainForest, a Zurich-based nonprofit co-creating open conservation technology with over 50 partner communities worldwide.