About KATI
What KATI Is
KATI is Ktown Team's community AI. It is built for Koreatown, Los Angeles — a neighborhood of roughly three square miles home to Koreans, Latinos, African Americans, Filipinos, and many others. A place shaped by immigration, by multiple languages spoken on the same block, by working families navigating systems that were not designed with them in mind.
KATI exists to help people find what they need — a health clinic, their rights as a tenant, information about a school program, a city service — in the language they think in, without requiring technical knowledge to use it, and without collecting more about them than is necessary to help.
It is not a product. It is infrastructure — the same way roads and water are infrastructure. Its purpose is to work reliably, stay out of the way, and be there when someone needs it.
Who It Is For
KATI is designed for the people most likely to be left out of conventional technology: those who are unfamiliar with AI tools, those who have good reasons to distrust institutions, those for whom a wrong answer about a health clinic or a housing application has real consequences.
Many people carry fear or skepticism toward AI — not because they misunderstand it, but because they have lived experience with systems that claimed to help and instead extracted, surveilled, or ignored them. That skepticism is reasonable. KATI is designed to earn trust slowly, through consistency and usefulness, not through claims.
For those who never want to interact with an AI directly, there is always a person. The human layer is not a fallback — it is a first-class option at every step. If you have questions, see our common questions.
People Artificial Intelligence
KATI is built under a framework called PAI — People Artificial Intelligence. The core idea is simple: AI should be built with communities, not just for them.
In practice, this means the community defines what problems are worth solving. It means outcomes are measured by whether people's lives improve, not by how often they use the tool. It means the community has the right to change direction, slow down, or stop development if it conflicts with their values.
Most AI is built by people with no stake in the communities they are building for. PAI starts from the opposite position: the people closest to the problems lead the solutions.
Language Is Not an Add-On
Koreatown speaks Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, English, and more — often mixed together in the same conversation. KATI is built for this reality.
Multilingual access is not a translation button appended to an English-first tool. It is a foundation. KATI responds in the language a person writes in. It draws on translation trained on local community content — the patterns of how people in Koreatown actually speak, not how textbooks say they should.
Language barriers have kept too many people from the services they need. KATI is built on the premise that language is never a reason someone goes without.
Your Data Belongs to the Community
KATI collects only what it needs to help you. Nothing more. No account is required to access basic features. Sensitive interactions are not retained. You have the right to access, correct, or delete anything KATI holds about you.
Data generated by Koreatown residents is hosted locally, within Ktown infrastructure. It does not leave the community without the community's knowledge. It is not sold, licensed, or shared with partners as a condition of funding.
For undocumented residents and others with heightened privacy needs, anonymous interaction is available. Privacy is a structural commitment, not a policy statement. Read our full privacy commitments.
Money Stays in the Community
When public money or community contributions are invested in a tool meant to serve Koreatown, those resources should flow back into Koreatown — not to outside vendors, cloud companies, or consulting firms with no stake in the neighborhood.
KATI is built to keep its economic activity local. Infrastructure is managed by Ktown Cloud. Translators are paid in currency redeemable at local businesses. When the tool needs people — engineers, community navigators, support staff — the first place to look is the community itself.
KATI is free to use. The residents who need it most will never encounter a paywall.
Shape It
KATI is a community tool, which means the community builds it. You can contribute by translating community content, testing the tool and reporting what does not work, sharing what you need that KATI does not yet provide, or joining Ktown Team's Digital Innovation team to work on it directly.
If you have a skill — in language, technology, health, law, education — there is a place for it here. The tool will only be as good as the community that shapes it.
Learn more at wiki.ktown.team, or see all the ways to get involved.