TurkuNLP Group at the University of Turku is part of a consortium where Europe's leading AI companies and research institutions are joining forces and expertise to develop the next-generation open-source language models. The OpenEuroLLM project aims to advance European AI capabilities.
One fifth of the 20 members of the OpenEuroLLM consortium are Finnish. The consortium brings together 20 leading European research institutions, companies, and centres of excellence. From the University of Turku, the TurkuNLP Group is participating in the consortium.
“In the TurkuNLP Group, we have been working on Finnish language technology and open science for a couple of decades. Open-source AI models and university actors are key to Europe's competitiveness, because only through our own research and education can we ensure the preservation and development of competence. It is also a question of security and the future of democracy," says Tapio Salakoski, Vice Rector of the University of Turku and Professor of Computer Science.
The consortium will build a family of performant, multilingual, large language foundation models for commercial, industrial and public services.
The transparent and compliant open-source models will democratise access to high-quality AI technologies and strengthen the ability of European companies to compete on a global market and public organisations to produce public services with great impact.
The OpenEuroLLM project is aligned with the imperative to improve Europe’s competitiveness and digital sovereignty. The consortium will start its work on 1 February 2025 with funding from the European Commission under the Digital Europe Programme.
In addition to the TurkuNLP research group at the University of Turku, Finnish partners of the consortium include AMD Silo AI, the language technology research group at the University of Helsinki, and CSC - IT Centre for Science. The project is coordinated by Jan Hajič of Charles University in Czechia, who is leading the project together with Peter Sarlin of AMD Silo AI.
The TurkuNLP Group has been working closely with AMD Silo AI, and together they have developed the Poro and Viking language models.
> More information and the partners of the consortium on the OpenEuroLLM website
Photo: AI-generated image, Wes Cockx/Unsplash
