Google and actor Idris Elba to fund African creator access to AI

Alphabet Inc.’s Google and UK actor Idris Elba will fund access to artificial intelligence tools for African creators, with the goal of helping them produce high-quality content faster and more cheaply.

The actor’s Elba Hope Foundation and Google will pay for access to the tech firm’s flagship Gemini AI assistant and other digital products for about 100,000 creators in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone to the value of about $1 million, Google Senior Vice President for Research and Technology James Manyika said.

“We think about all those creatives who don’t have access to these enormous studio budgets,” said Manyika in an interview. “AI is potentially a tool that can enable them to do work that they couldn’t otherwise do because they don’t have huge budgets.”

Elba is positioning himself as a key investor in Africa’s creative economy, and has said that he would also set up a