Prof Wile says AI will never be able to do the linguist's job, which requires a lot of human interaction with communities, but it could allow linguists to get much richer, stronger data out of their recordings in less time.

"You can’t trust automatic speech-to-text, even in english, to get it perfect. So what we want to do is integrate the linguist's workflow," she says, suggesting that software could highlight and cross-reference important context in a transcript, or could even use machine learning to get better over time if it was integrated into the data collections systems through apps.

"Some languages have kinship terms that we don’t have in english. How does a linguist even know what questions to ask? ‘Do you have a different word for your sister’s child compared to your brothers child?’ But if we had apps on iPhones that actually had these relationships and could illicit that data automatically. So the person speaking the language would be directly working with the curating and recording of that data".

Google's Daan Van Esch, a product manager who works with the company's language teams to integrate dialects into products like Translate,  says that helping heritage languages cross the digital divide is critically important in the connected era.

"Since everyone is on social media these days, it actually means a lot to people for their language to exist in a digital space", he says. Since half of all online content is stored in English, each language added to Google's automatic translation ability opens up a wealth of information online for speakers.

"Whether we're talking about using AI to help transcribe a bunch of recording from the field, or eventually gathering dictionaries … it means a lot to these communities", says Mr Van Esch.

The CoEDL team's long-term ambition is to build language recognition and analysis software into their social robot, named Opie, who was designed to help teach endangered languages to children.

"You need young children, who are just coming to terms with their languages, to have access to digital resources. How do you do that? Enter robots", Prof Wiles says.

"We wanted to build robots that could go to remote communities, could be acceptable in cultural senses and in multiple different languages".

Opie is a low-cost and transportable robot made out of wood, a couple of tablets, a speaker, a mobile router, a Raspberry Pi computer and a regular USB charger hub. One tablet screen shows stories, games and lessons while the other shows a face that reacts to the child's actions. The physical and software design for each Opie is developed together with the community that will be using it, with most going to language centres or creches.

One activity on the Opie designed with the Ngukurr Language Centre is based on a memory card game the community liked playing on one of the centre's old computers. The instructions are spoken in Kriol, but the tablet houses four different heritage languages. When a card is flipped over that shows a grasshopper, for example, the word for grasshopper in the heritage language is played out loud. The software is modular so that new stories or even whole languages can be added.

While an application like this could easily be put on an app store for tablets and phones, Prof Wiles says the robot format is extremely important for teaching children aged two to five, the perfect age for learning languages.

"Social dynamics is really fast; 200 milliseconds is the time between when I say something and you nod or respond ... and most of our technology can't do that fast enough," she says.

"So we wanted to build our own robots that would actually have fast response. So that's where the eyes come in."

Prof Wiles and Mr Foley say that Australian indigenous languages, being very closely tied to indigenous cultures as well as the geographic locations in which they were spoken, contain a wealth of valuable cultural information that should be preserved.

Not only can ongoing preservation efforts protect endangered languages — with benefits including increased health outcomes for the remaining speakers — but Mr Foley says processing of artefacts and historical documents could even lead to the transcription and revitalisation of dialects that have already become extinct.