Just AI

The use of Artificial Intelligence for Research and in the Public Interest: Introduction and Case Studies.

Copyright, The Right to Research and 'Just AI'

In today’s world, research in fields ranging from health, education and agriculture to economics, social sciences and humanities relies on computational methods, and in particular artificial intelligence tools.

Policy makers and public interest advocates around the world are beginning to formulate a policy agenda for the promotion of Just AI. The concept of Just AI combines the desires for promoting public accountability and accessibility in AI infrastructure advocated by “Public AI” advocates with additional human rights concerns, including the moral and material interests of creators, the stewardship of traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, and genetic resources by communities, and the developmental priorities of the Global South.

Many of the core elements of a Just AI vision require the implementation or alteration of copyright and related knowledge governance policies (including, e.g., privacy law, data governance, competition law, etc.). These areas of law are often shaped and informed by international treaties and policies being implemented and reformed in International Geneva.

At the Centre on Knowledge Governance we are working with a network of 100 scholars in 30 countries and with representatives of governments in multilateral organisations in Geneva to help define a policy agenda on Copyright, the Right to Research and Just AI.

Multilateral negotiations which are important for the Just AI vision

There are a wide range of policy processes in International Geneva that could promote or pose barriers to achieving elements of the Just AI agenda. For example:

A recently proposed Draft Instrument on Limitations and Exceptions proposed by the African Group in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights proposes to require that all countries adopt exceptions for “[u]ses in the course of scientific research activities,” which are critical to the creation of Public AI data sets and models.
The SCCR’s Digital Copyright Agenda, and WIPO’s Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure (AIII) project, is considering proposals for instruments and the support of “IP Infrastructure,” that can help creators ensure the licensing of uses of their works in AI models, particularly in the audio visual field.
Just AI concepts are being discussed in the World Health Organization, which seeks to promote uses of AI for health uses, and in the International Telecommunications Union, which sponsors an annual conference promoting “AI for Good.”
The World Trade Organization’s E-Commerce agenda and some plurilateral trade agreements contain proposals that could pose barriers to Just AI concepts, including proposals to limit data localization and disclosure of algorithms and source code, that may be necessary to ensure public accountability and democratic oversight of AI models.

Filling a gap: the role of CKG

While many Just AI policies are subject to research and advocacy at the national level, CKG is the only Geneva-based institution coordinating efforts to promote research, policy debate, and capacity building for diplomats engaging in knowledge governance policy forums creating AI rules and guidelines in International Geneva.

Our agenda includes activities for the promotion of scholarship, building a platform for dialogues between researchers, stakeholders and governments, supporting executive education and teaching programs, and providing technical assistance to Geneva-based diplomats. Below we present a series of case studies of Just AI in the Global South.

Representatives of Governments which form part of the Like Minded Countries (LMC) group meet in February 2026 to discuss policy work in the World Intellectual Property Organization. Technical inputs were provided by the Centre on Knowledge Governance and the South Centre.

Case Studies

These case studies grew out of the Geneva Knowledge Centre’s work on Text and Data Mining and our policy work in support of the Right to Research. They examine how computational methods and Artificial Intelligence (AI) play a leading role in finding and implementing solutions to local and global challenges. A common thread that runs through all the cases is how intellectual property laws can support innovation and problem solving in the public interest, whilst protecting the interests of creators, communities and custodians of traditional knowledge. In addition several practitioners are looking at how to redress data imbalances. The cases include:

Work by researchers at the University of Pretoria Data Sciences for Social Impact Research Group to broaden health access in South Africa by creating a talking health chatbot based on a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on South African vernacular TV shows.
A cross border collaboration between the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at the University of Strathmore in Kenya and the Data Sciences Law Lab at the University of Pretoria to develop a hierarchical creative commons license called NOODL, which facilitates access to African works for non-profit or developmental users, whilst ensuring larger corporations provide benefits to local communities for their use of data.
Work by Blind South Africa to identify and promote tools for the visually impaired which are trained to work in African languages.
Efforts to to create LATAM-GPT, a large language model using ethically-sourced data and tuned to the cultural specificities of researchers and communities in the Latin America, led by Chile’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) with support from non-governmental groups such as Data-Uruguay and Fundación Via Libre in Argentina.
A paradigm shift from Data Mining to Data Farming being led by Lanfrica, natural language processing pioneers in Nigeria, who launched their NaijaVoices initiative dedicated to building a digital future for all Nigerian languages, irrespective of their popularity or status. In 2024, Lanfrica released the largest African speech dataset to date, spanning over 5,000 unique voices and 1,800 hours.

Each of our case studies in written up in the form of a report, combined with a video exploration of the case study in the words of its leading practitioners. Click below to explore them.