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 analysis Apple earnings: About that iPhone 'slump' in China Based on information from Thursday's earnings report, it seems that data pointing to an iPhone slump in China were over-baked. By Jonny Evans May 03, 2024 9 mins iMac iPhone Apple news Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams Microsoft is encouraging Teams customers to move to the new, faster version of the collaboration app; the older version will be switched off next year. By Matthew Finnegan May 03, 2024 3 mins Microsoft Teams Collaboration Software Productivity Software news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills 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