Operating Division: Lingsight

Although linguistics is traditionally an academic discipline, the rise of chatbots and other conversational AI systems has highlighted the need for the tech sector to understand how language works.

One venture aiming to bring these two together is Lingsight, which was established as an Operating Division (OD) by Academic Commercial Services within the University of Birmingham Enterprise in October 2024. It functions as a linguistics consulting firm, applying insights from fields like corpus linguistics and computational linguistics to industry challenges. There is a focus on AI and technology, but with the flexibility to serve a wider range of sectors

Lingsight was co-founded by Professor Jack Grieve and a team of academic linguists who bring a wide range of expertise to the venture: Dr Akira Murakami, Dr Matteo Fuoli, Dr Marcus Perlman, Dr Jason Grafmiller and Professor Bodo Winter. Together, they combine deep academic insight with practical experience to help organisations navigate complex language challenges in real-world contexts.

“With the rise of the internet, AI, digital communication, and the service economy, enormous amounts of money are being invested in language-related industries, but much of this work remains fairly naive from a linguistic perspective,” says Professor Grieve, who recently published a paper on how sociolinguistics can help improve the performance of large language models such as ChatGPT. The expertise developed in academic linguistics can ensure that industries which depend heavily on language, from tech companies to service providers, have access to more sophisticated, data-driven insights.

Contact centres produce massive amounts of communication data; every call represents a record of interaction between an agent and a customer, and collectively these records offer an unparalleled opportunity to understand customer communications.

Lingsight is working to help organisations harness this data in order to train AI systems that improve efficiency and customer service. Automated call systems trained on biased datasets run the risk of misunderstanding certain accents or dialects. By applying linguistic expertise to dataset design, Lingsight will be able to minimise these risks, helping companies improve inclusivity.

Marketing and branding represent another important use case. Here, Lingsight’s focus is on the role language plays in shaping perception. Professor Grieve points to the classic example of the Chevrolet Nova, where “nova” in Spanish translates to “no go”. “We can help avoid those kinds of things,” he says. “We can analyse the name’s connotations and implications, and test them.”

An important figure in Lingsight’s development has been John Cooke, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Birmingham and facilitator on the Medici Enterprise Training Programme, who has provided crucial guidance in shaping its business model and strategy. This collaboration has not only given the team access to entrepreneurial knowledge but also strengthened their confidence in taking their academic insights into a commercial space.

The OD model itself provides Lingsight with unique advantages. Because it exists within Enterprise, the team can pursue projects at their own pace while retaining their full-time academic positions. This structure dramatically reduces risk while preserving flexibility. It also simplifies administrative challenges: rather than requiring separate approvals for each consultant on every project, the team can secure blanket approval for its activities.

Lingsight has secured a trademark for its name and begun building its presence through a LinkedIn page and a website. While it is not yet a fully independent company, the OD structure allows Lingsight to operate as a commercial entity, creating opportunities that would have been harder to pursue as an informal group of consultants. “It’s a really good setup that allows us to explore the market, develop as a team, and work with industry experts, without taking on major risks,” says Professor Grieve.