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.
Matjie et al. (2026) studied this question.