- The Jane Goodall Institute has more than 500,000 pages of handwritten chimpanzee research.
- To digitize the data, the institute worked with AWS to create the Gombe AI Research Platform.
- The tool increases data access and provides multimedia analysis to support global research efforts.
By December 2025, AWS, the Jane Goodall Institute, and AI tool and data platform builder Ode PB held a kickoff meeting to transition the new system, called the Gombe AI Research Platform. Throughout early 2026, the teams worked to map out platform requirements and researcher workflows where AI could be helpful.
Some of the institute’s researchers are already experimenting with the Gombe AI Research Platform, and the tool is expected to be fully live by the fourth quarter of 2026, said Rashid. The teams are still developing a few elements, like a specialized dictionary derived from 65 years of field notes and the ability to understand a Gombe-specific dialect of Swahili.
The outcome
Pintea said that he expects the AI to help the organization finally catch up with its six-year backlog of data that has yet to be digitized. He added that he hopes the Gombe AI Research Platform will be used by field researchers, principal investigators, Ph.D. students, and undergraduates beyond the Jane Goodall Institute.
In Uganda’s Kibale National Park, two groups of chimpanzees have been fighting in the second-ever recorded civil war among the species. Pintea said the institute’s AI efforts are making real-time field data more readily accessible to researchers studying the phenomenon, which was first recorded in Gombe.
“It’s about understanding our closest living relative, as a way to understand human evolution and define ourselves,” said Pintea.
