OpenAI, Meta, Orange to Expand African AI Models

Orange, a French telecom company, has partnered with OpenAI and Meta Platforms to create AI models tailored to African regional languages, starting with Wolof and Pulaar, spoken in West Africa. This collaboration aims to address the underrepresentation of these languages in mainstream AI systems due to the reliance on U.S.-based data, which limits understanding of regional dialects. Orange will integrate these language models, based on OpenAI's Whisper and Meta's Llama, into customer support and offer them for non-commercial use to governments and educational institutions. Around 50,000 Orange employees will use OpenAI models, and these AI tools will be hosted in European data centers to ensure data security. The project is set to roll out in early 2025, with plans to expand across 18 West African nations, aligning with the global push for 'sovereign AI' that respects local languages and cultures.