AI Insights

UCT researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) language model trained specifically on South Africa’s 11 official written languages – helping close a gap that has left millions underserved by mainstream AI tools.

Artists and scholars explored generative AI's impact on creativity, debating originality, authorship, and whether AI-driven imitation is extraction or participation in cultural production

Democratic self-determination requires standing in decisions about AI. And right now, in healthcare, most of us have little to none.

Republished: UCT and Stellenbosch University academics met to tackle AI's impact on higher education assessments, exploring integrity, writing skills and outcomes-based approaches.

Republished: UCT's CIDRI-Africa scientists found that PET and CT scans can detect TB years before symptoms or routine tests reveal it.

The launch of Africa's largest GPU cluster for AI research through the African Compute Initiative, will give African researchers the infrastructure to develop AI systems locally.

The UCT Flourish Lab: AI and Human Flourishing on 1 - 2 April 2026 – is a two-day initiative exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping human cognition, decision-making, education, and well-being.

CISPA researchers visited UCT in February 2026 for a week of research exchange, public talks, a cybersecurity outreach colloquium, and a summer school — marking a milestone in a growing partnership.

Republished:South Africa's data centres are bypassing load shedding by building private solar plants and wheeling power, becoming energy-intensive AI factories that rely on diesel backup while threatening local jobs.

Dr Tim Köhler, a senior research officer at UCT's Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU), is among 19 early-career researchers worldwide selected to receive funding from Schmidt Sciences’ AI at Work programme.

Republished:The ‘undressing’ AI chatbot controversy, in which Elon Musk’s Grok generated and shared nonconsensual sexualised images highlights the harmful abuses and risks of unchecked generative AI.

UCT's H3D and Ersilia Open Source Initiative have created a computational pipeline to tailor malaria and TB treatment to African genetic diversity, marking a step towards safer, more effective African-centric drug dosing.

UCT's Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching researchers share early insights on developing literacies for ethical, critical and constructive use of generative AI in teaching, learning and assessment.

Webinar Recap: How can African repair practices reshape AI ethics? Moving beyond upstream design concerns towards downstream sites where ethical judgement occurs amid constraint, toxicity and unequal exposure.

An online workshop bringing cutting-edge machine learning to African researchers, addressing unique health challenges through a partnership between H3D Foundation and Ersilia.

Webinar Recap: Ololade Faniyi and Irene Mwendwa repositioned African feminist thought as a vital source of critique for AI ethics, challenging frameworks that treat Africa only as a site of harm rather than innovation.

J-PAL researchers joined us for the 2025 ARUA international conference, with Sarah Kopper conducting a workshop on evaluating AI interventions, and Sam Carter delivering a keynote on the potential of AI to reduce poverty and inequality.

Webinar Recap: Chris Emezue reveals how Africa's AI contributions remain hidden in plain sight—and how Lanfrica is creating visibility for resources across the continent.

AI promises to enhance us, but by outsourcing memory, reasoning, and empathy to machines, we risk atrophying the very human faculties we have a moral duty to cultivate - turning transcendence into dependence.

Republished:: CISPA signs MoUs with UCT and WITS to advance cybersecurity and AI research. The partnerships enable student exchanges, joint projects, and capacity building across Africa and Europe.

UCT and the Global Centre on AI Governance (GCG) recently launched the African Hub on AI Safety, Peace, and Security, first-of-its-kind platform designed to ensure that African perspectives are at the centre of global AI safety debates.