Orange, the french telecommunications company, is collaborating with OpenAI and Meta to create custom AI models that can understand West African languages.
The company plans to roll out AI models incorporating two West African languages, Wolof and Pulaar in early 2025.
Wolof is spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and southern Mauritania, while Pulaar is primarily spoken in Senegal.
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Oranges sees the need for AI conversational systems to understand diverse languages to ensure inclusivity. They claim the majority of AI companies train their algorithms on data originating from the U.S. which makes it hard for those models to understand text and voice-based communications composed outside of what they’ve been trained.
“Major large language models like OpenAI’s GPT, Meta’s Llama and Anthropic’s Claude aren’t well suited to Africans’ needs as they weren’t trained specifically on data originating from the region” according to Orange’s AI chief, Steve Jarrett.
“Having an open model, you’re able to do what’s called fine-tuning, where you introduce additional information to the model that wasn’t included when it was first trained, We’re adding the recognition of West African regional languages that are not understood today by any AI.” Steve Jarrett noted.
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The AI model will be open-source externally provided by Orange with a free license for non-commercial including public health and education.
There are plans for expansion to cover all 18 West African countries in the future.
Source: CNBC
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