Quebec's national library launches AI databank for Quebec culture

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ), the province's national library and archives institution, has launched the experimental phase of a proposed government and cultural databank in French and Indigenous languages.

The project aims to address a persistent gap: major generative AI systems struggle to provide reliable information about Quebec society, economy, and culture because of limited Quebec-related data in their training sets. A 2024 report by Quebec's innovation council attributed the problem in part to the "very small quantity of data on Quebec" available in AI training datasets.

Marie Grégoire, president and CEO of BAnQ, said the goal is to ensure AI systems better reflect Quebec society and culture. "That means having Quebec references, whether in small models or large models, whether they come from research or from the business community," she said.

BAnQ plans to begin with its own collections before considering data from other sources. The future platform would not serve as a public distribution channel for creative works, and access to the data would be tightly controlled. Similar initiatives have emerged in Sweden, where large collections of Nordic-language texts have been assembled to help develop generative AI models for Scandinavian languages.

This is what happens when you realize your culture's missing from the AI conversation — and decide to fix it yourself.