Panopto has partnered with Te Hiku Media as a caption provider. Institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand can now caption te reo Māori content using models built and governed by Māori.
Three decades of Māori language broadcasting
For more than 30 years, Te Reo Irirangi o Te Hiku o Te Ika has broadcast from Kaitāia in the Far North. The iwi media hub, known as Te Hiku Media, represents the Māori language broadcasting interests of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupouri, Ngāi Takoto, Te Rarawa, and Ngāti Kahu.
In 2018, Te Hiku Media set out to teach computers te reo Māori. The project became one of the most respected examples of indigenous language technology worldwide.
“We are committed to the revitalization of our language and the development of our people in a strong language economy. This means ensuring that we claim and protect space for our language, our people and our worldview in the technological landscape. Training models using ethically obtained data that is cared for and used appropriately is also part of that overall commitment.” – Suzanne Duncan, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Te Hiku Media.
A speech model built on data people chose to share
Rather than scrape recordings from existing sources, Te Hiku Media asked people to contribute audio directly. The Kōrero Māori campaign invited speakers to record themselves reading set phrases, and in 10 days, more than 2,500 people signed up and read over 200,000 phrases, producing more than 300 hours of labeled speech. Contributors could see and understand the terms of every contribution.
That effort became Papa Reo, Te Hiku Media’s language technology platform. Its transcription and captioning service, Kaituhi, was built first for iwi radio and archival work, then extended to help institutions caption te reo Māori and bilingual content.
Te Hiku Media operates under what it calls the Kaitiakitanga License, a guardianship model where data is cared for rather than owned. Any benefit the data creates flows back to the people who provided it. Requests to access the data or use the tools built on it go through a process grounded in tikanga Māori.
Accuracy that holds up in bilingual speech
Today, Te Hiku Media reports that its automatic speech recognition transcribes te reo Māori with 92% accuracy, and bilingual speech that shifts between te reo Māori and New Zealand English with 82% accuracy. The second figure matters especially to educational institutions. Classroom kōrero often shifts between languages mid-sentence, a pattern most speech recognition systems fail to handle.
“Te Hiku Media has spent years building speech technology that is governed by the people whose language it serves. We are glad to make it available to institutions in Aotearoa through Panopto, and our role is to support that work.” – Ben Kim, ANZ Director, Panopto.
How institutions can connect
Institutions can meet with the Te Hiku Media team, either directly or through their Panopto account manager, to receive a private key for the service. A Panopto administrator then configures the connection under System, then Accessibility Services. Once connected, Te Hiku Media generates te reo Māori and bilingual captions and returns them to Panopto, where the content stays searchable, accessible, and available inside the learning management system alongside everything else.
Each institution holds its own relationship with Te Hiku Media. Panopto does not resell, rebrand, or repackage its models. The integration exists so institutions can use a captioning service governed by the people whose language it is.
Wānanga, universities, and polytechnics teaching in te reo Māori or serving large numbers of Māori learners no longer have to choose between accessible captioning and keeping that content with the people who govern the language.
About Panopto
Panopto is the global leader in AI-powered video knowledge management, helping organizations and educational institutions capture, activate, and scale the impact of knowledge. Trusted by more than 2,000 organizations worldwide, including many of the world’s leading universities, Panopto transforms recorded expertise into trusted, searchable, and measurable knowledge that helps people learn faster, work smarter, and make better decisions.
About Te Hiku Media
Te Hiku Media is a charitable media organization, collectively belonging to the Far North iwi of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupouri, Ngāi Takoto, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu. The station is an iwi communications hub for iwi radio, online TV, and media services. Māori language revitalization is a core focus of Te Hiku Media, as are archiving and training.
