Sounds like your project is for southern American English presumably including African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and for regional accents in the African continent specifically for the English language.
But tangentially related, for non-English languages of the African continent, the Gates Foundation are pledging some grants to improve AI access outside of English-speaking regions: https://news.bpdata.com/article/gates-foundation-pledges-1-b...
Despite being focused on English, your project could be of interest for their funding. It's probably worth reaching out to let them know about your work.
Thanks for the tip, I will look into it. We wanted to broaden the model to include voices and accents from regions I don't typically hear or they might sound comical or like a caricature
We as an industry should not be working or associating with Bill Gates anymore or anyone else that was associated with Epstein and his cohorts. I just assume anyone still working with these people is complicit and needs to be thoroughly investigated.
I generally feel the same, but on the flip side…making proper use of some of his money is probably one of his ex-wife’s favorite things in the world to do.
Food for thought.
Also grok (musk), and the strong allegations of SA against altmann (openai)