REVIEW article
Front. Comput. Sci.
Sec. Human-Media Interaction
This article is part of the Research TopicArtificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies for Inclusive and Innovative EducationView all 4 articles
AI and the Digital Divide in Education
Provisionally accepted
- University of Limpopo, Sovenga, South Africa
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is an indispensable tool transforming education systems worldwide. It does so through its complex intelligent tutoring system and automated administrative operations managed by prompts. While AI seems to make it easy for learning or education to take place easily, it also promotes or leads to some unfair advantages for some learners or students. This is due to the languages used by the AI, cultural mismatches between the AI developers and users, and algorithm bias. We used a focused narrative and comparative review of case studies from countries with similar socio-economic statuses and that have a visible divide between urban and rural areas/regions. From the analysed case studies, we therefore argue that despite its benefits, AI also does lead to a digital divide, either intentionally or unintentionally, due to the above-mentioned reasons. We conclude by proposing a practical training application that can lead to inclusivity, which will integrate local languages, cultures, and communities into AI tools development and translation. And more importantly, by proposing that the algorithm used in AI tools be inclusive, AI tools design be participatory, AI be multilingual and or importantly AI teachers be trained.
Keywords: Algorithm Bias, Artificial intelligence (AI), cultural bias, digital divide, Education, Inclusivity in Education, language barriers
Received: 02 Dec 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Matjie, Nethavhani and Matlakala. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mokgata Alleen Matjie
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