The LLM will be developed with the collaboration of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, Spain’s Prime Minister said. Credit: BlackFarm / Shutterstock Spain plans to build a foundational AI large language model trained in Spanish and in the country’s co-official languages, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on the eve of the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. The Spanish LLM will be transparent and open source, he said. While some AI models are trained on texts in multiple languages, more advanced AI features from US-based tech companies are often initially only available in English. That’s the case with Google Gemini, for example, which supports more than 40 languages but offers advanced features only in English. Making the Spanish language model widely available could help Spanish and non-Spanish enterprises alike to develop new digital services. Sánchez stressed the importance of reflecting deeply on the impact of generative AI technology on rights and freedoms, the labor market, or the design of public policies. Spain will play a relevant role in the development of the technology internationally and will promote its use in industry and in scientific research, he said. For the development of the Spanish large language model, the administration has established a public-private collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Spanish Supercomputing Network, the Spanish Academy of Language (RAE) and the Association of Spanish Language Academies. The administration also plans to extend the initiative to Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. The government points out that the percentage of language resources in English reaches as high as 90 per cent in many of the current systems. In this way, the initiative “seeks to provide an open, public, and accessible language infrastructure for companies, so that they can have a large-scale language model that facilitates services that allow them to develop advanced applications for their economic exploitation, such as intelligent assistants, conversational and dialogue systems or content generation models”. During his speech, Sánchez also highlighted the capacity of Barcelona and the surrounding Catalonia region to attract talent, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. “Barcelona and Spain embrace digital transformation as a unique opportunity,” he said. Related content news OpenAI unveils ‘Model Spec’: A framework for shaping responsible AI This first-of-its-kind document outlines the principles guiding model behavior in its API and ChatGPT, OpenAI announced in a blog post. By Gyana Swain May 09, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry Emerging Technology feature Windows 11 Insider Previews: What’s in the latest build? Get the latest info on new preview builds of Windows 11 as they roll out to Windows Insiders. Now updated for Build 26212 released for the Canary channel on May 8, 2024. By Preston Gralla May 09, 2024 253 mins Small and Medium Business Microsoft Windows 11 opinion Think Shadow AI is bad? Sneaky AI is worse It’s bad enough when an employee goes rogue and does an end-run around IT; but when a vendor does something similar, the problems could be broadly worse. By Evan Schuman May 09, 2024 5 mins Vendor Management Security Vendors and Providers feature Office 365: A guide to the updates Get the latest info on new features, bug fixes, and security updates for Office 365/Microsoft 365 for Windows as they roll out from Microsoft. Now updated for Version 2404 (Build 17531.20140), released on May 7, 2024. By Preston Gralla May 09, 2024 110 mins Microsoft 365 Microsoft Office Office Suites Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe