French telecom company Orange announced its partnership with OpenAI, backed by Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META), Facebook's parent company.
This collaboration aims to create custom artificial intelligence (AI) models tailored to understand African regional languages better, starting with West Africa. These AI systems will be built upon open-source models, Whisper and Llama, to address the challenges of less represented languages in mainstream AI solutions.
The project highlights the difficulties major AI firms face when their systems rely predominantly on U.S.-based data, which limits their ability to interpret languages and contexts from regions like Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Orange plans to fine-tune these models by integrating language-specific data, improving their capacity to recognize and process regional dialects, CNBC reports.
Orange's initiative will begin by including two West African languages, Wolof and Pulaar, spoken by approximately 16 million and 6 million people, respectively. These languages are commonly used in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania. The AI models will initially roll out in early 2025, with plans to cover all 18 West African nations in future expansions. Orange will also make these models available for non-commercial uses, including public health and education.
The initiative aligns with the growing global emphasis on "sovereign AI," which focuses on creating regionally controlled AI systems to safeguard local languages, cultures, and data. Orange is also working on hosting OpenAI models in European data centers to ensure localized data processing and early access to advanced AI models. These efforts will help Orange develop innovative applications like AI-powered voice systems for customer service.
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) chief Jensen Huang expressed solidarity with sovereign AI, which he deems critical for countries to leverage their strengths. He is backing it with a $110 million fund for startups.
International Business Machines Corp (NYSE: IBM) chief Arvind Krishna and Nvidia CFO Colette Kress expressed similar opinions.