{"id":1155391,"date":"2025-12-04T04:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-project&#038;p=1155391"},"modified":"2026-01-07T16:06:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T00:06:28","slug":"cura-culture-conditioned-routing-for-safe-agentic-ai","status":"publish","type":"msr-project","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/cura-culture-conditioned-routing-for-safe-agentic-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"CuRA: Culture-Conditioned Routing for Safe Agentic AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"mb-3 moray-highlight\">\n\t<div class=\"card-img-overlay mx-lg-0\">\n\t\t<div class=\"card-background  has-background- card-background--full-bleed\">\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"721\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"background pattern\" style=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-300x113.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-1024x385.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-768x288.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-1536x577.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-1600x600.jpg 1600w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CuRA_-Culture-Conditioned-Routing-for-Safe-Agentic-AI_Banner-1920x721-1-240x90.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<!-- Foreground -->\n\t\t<div class=\"card-foreground d-flex mt-md-n5 my-lg-5 px-g px-lg-0\">\n\t\t\t<!-- Container -->\n\t\t\t<div class=\"container d-flex mt-md-n5 my-lg-5 \">\n\t\t\t\t<!-- Card wrapper -->\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"w-100 w-lg-col-5\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<!-- Card -->\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"card material-md-card py-5 px-md-5\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"card-body \">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"cura-culture-conditioned-routing-for-safe-agentic-ai\">CuRA: Culture-Conditioned Routing for Safe Agentic AI<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>This project tackles the challenge of cultural misalignment in AI agents, which often leads to unsafe or inappropriate behaviour in diverse, real-world interactions. CuRA introduces a dynamic routing framework that leverages specialised cultural adapters to generate context-aware, low-risk responses across multiple turns and modalities. Paired with CultureConverse\u2014a multimodal, scenario-driven dataset grounded in Southeast Asian norms\u2014the system learns to maintain cultural appropriateness, coherence, and etiquette in complex dialogues. Expected outcomes include measurable reductions in norm violations and improved user trust, paving the way for safer, culturally aligned AI in public-facing domains such as healthcare, education, and tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This research is conducted via&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/academic-program\/agentic-ai-research-and-innovation\/\">The Agentic AI Research and Innovation&nbsp;<\/a>(AARI) Initiative which focuses on the next frontier of agentic systems through&nbsp;<em>Grand Challenges<\/em>&nbsp;with the academic community and Microsoft Research.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This project tackles the challenge of cultural misalignment in AI agents, which often leads to unsafe or inappropriate behaviour in diverse, real-world interactions. CuRA introduces a dynamic routing framework that leverages specialised cultural adapters to generate context-aware, low-risk responses across multiple turns and modalities. Paired with CultureConverse\u2014a multimodal, scenario-driven dataset grounded in Southeast Asian norms\u2014the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1155710,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"research-area":[13556],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1155391","msr-project","type-msr-project","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us","msr-archive-status-active"],"msr_project_start":"","related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-groups":[],"related-events":[],"related-opportunities":[],"related-posts":[],"related-articles":[],"tab-content":[],"slides":[],"related-researchers":[{"type":"guest","display_name":"Roy Ka-Wei Lee","user_id":1157397,"people_section":"Section name 0","alias":""},{"type":"guest","display_name":"Bryan Tan","user_id":1157399,"people_section":"Section name 0","alias":""},{"type":"user_nicename","display_name":"Xiaoyuan Yi","user_id":40768,"people_section":"Section name 0","alias":"xiaoyuanyi"},{"type":"guest","display_name":"Weihua Zheng","user_id":1159279,"people_section":"Section name 0","alias":""}],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/1155391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-project"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/1155391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1159282,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/1155391\/revisions\/1159282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1155710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1155391"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1155391"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1155391"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1155391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}