ConlangCrafter Turns AI to Imagining Languages
IEEE Spectrum AI Michelle Hampson
Researchers at UC Berkeley developed ConlangCrafter, an AI model that generates constructed languages with consistent rule systems and linguistic diversity. The model demonstrated it can be twice as diverse and 70 percent more consistent than general-purpose LLMs like Gemini-2.5-Pro when creating invented languages, and is available free online. The tool could help natural language processing researchers systematically evaluate how linguistic structure affects model performance in ways previously difficult to test.
Why it matters
There are over 7,000 natural languages today, but that doesn’t stop people from occasionally making up completely new ones. These constructed languages, or conlangs, include Dothraki, Klingon, and various Elvish languages. Now, an AI model called ConlangCrafter is also capable of generating new languages—and it is particularly good at it.In a paper published 27 June in the Proceedings of the Association of Computational Linguists, researchers analyzed ConlangCrafter’s language-generation abilities, reporting that it can develop a diverse array of novel languages that consistently abide by their rules.How ConlangCrafter Creates New LanguagesIn previous work, Gašper Beguš, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, showed how large language models (LLMs) can analyze languages to the same extent as most humans. In his most recent endeavor, he set out to push the language boundaries of AI models even further.“Creating an entire language is not an easy
