Microsoft Research and Digital Green Release Video: Project Gecko Explores Culturally Grounded AI for Small-Holder Farmers in India and Kenya
Microsoft Research and Digital Green have released a video telling the story of Project Gecko, which explores how to build culturally grounded AI systems for small-holder farming communities in India and Kenya through research, design, and engineering collaboration. The video covers the journey from field research to the development of MMCT and Paza models, Pazabench evaluation benchmarks, and Atlas, Paza, and Vibhasha playbooks.
On October 23, 2026, Microsoft Research and Digital Green released a video titled "Project Gecko Story," exploring what it takes to build AI that works for people and communities often overlooked by today's technologies. The project focuses on small-holder farming communities across India and Kenya, aiming to develop AI systems around their languages, knowledge, contexts, and everyday realities.
The video showcases the complete journey of this multi-disciplinary project, starting from understanding how farmers seek and share agricultural knowledge, moving to developing language and speech technologies, and establishing approaches for culturally grounded evaluation of models. Project Gecko brings together research, design, and engineering to rethink how AI systems are created.
Specifically, the video documents the process from field research to the development and evaluation of the MMCT and Paza models, along with the Pazabench evaluation benchmark and the Atlas, Paza, and Vibhasha playbooks. These outputs are described as practical guidelines for developing more human-centred, culturally grounded AI tools. Speakers from Microsoft Research and Digital Green include Jacki O'Neill, Najeeb Abdulhamid, Stephanie Nyairo, and others.