artificial intelligence (AI) is an engine capable of transforming sectors as diverse as the new economy of language, education and culture. However, for this technological revolution to be beneficial for everyone, it is essential that the multiple languages and cultures in the world are correctly represented and strengthened in the digital sphere. This is where the ILENIA (Impulse of Languages in Artificial Intelligence) project comes into play, an ambitious initiative that seeks to integrate the co-official languages of Spain at the forefront of smart technologies. Therefore, in this article we will explore the objectives and structure of the ILENIA project, the subprojects dedicated to each co-official language and the importance of multilingualism in technological and economic development.
Where is the ILENIA project heading?
The ILENIA project (Impulse of Languages in Artificial Intelligence) aims to create an inclusive and multilingual digital ecosystem in Spain, positioning the country as a leader in the integration of artificial intelligence with co-official languages. With an investment of 7 million euros, ILENIA seeks to develop advanced linguistic resources that cover Catalan, Galician, Basque and Valencian. These resources include multimodal corpora, neural language models, translation engines and speech recognizers in different languages. ILENIA is articulated in four specific projects framed within the strategic project of the PRTR (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan): AINA for Catalan, NÓS for Galician, GAITU for Basque and VIVES for Valencian. Each of these subprojects has the objective of generating technological tools that facilitate the use of these official languages in artificial intelligence applications, such as voice assistants, automatic translators and conversational agents.
How many subprojects make up ILENIA?
The ILENIA project (Impulse of Languages in Artificial Intelligence) is structured around four main subprojects, each focused on a co-official language of Spain:
AINA
This subproject, coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación Consortium (BSC-CNS), focuses on the creation of corpora and computer models for the Catalan language. With a budget of 3 million euros, AINA seeks to facilitate the integration of Catalan in applications based on artificial intelligence, such as voice assistants, Internet search engines and automatic translators.
WE
Under the coordination of the University of Santiago de Compostela, NÓS receives funding of 2 million euros. Its objective is to develop the digital and linguistic resources necessary to promote the use of Galician in smart technologies, including voice assistants and conversational agents.
GAITU
Coordinated by the University of the Basque Country through the Basque Center for Language Technology (HiTZ), GAITU also has 2 million euros of funding. This subproject aims to develop basic and transversal linguistic services in Basque for use in public administration and other strategic sectors.
YOU LIVE
With 500,000 euros of funding, the University of Alicante, through the Center for Digital Intelligence (CENID), leads the VIVES project. Its main focus is the creation of massive corpora of voice and text in Valencian, using both data from public administration and citizen participation.
How is this project coordinated?
General coordination is carried out by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación Consortium (BSC-CNS), which leads the AINA subproject and supervises the progress of the project as a whole for the languages of Spain. Coordination focuses on guaranteeing synergy between the four language subprojects, optimizing resources and ensuring the integration of co-official languages in artificial intelligence applications that respond to the needs of society. PERTE (Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation) are a new instrument of digital transformation with public-private collaboration in which different public administrations, companies and research centers collaborate. Its objective is to promote large initiatives that clearly contribute to the transformation of Spain’s new digital economy.
What have been the advances of ILENIA?
The ILENIA artificial intelligence project has achieved several significant advances since its inception, reflecting its impact on the integration of co-official languages in the field of artificial intelligence within the framework of the economic recovery and transformation project:
Development of linguistic resources
ILENIA has made progress in the creation of multimodal corpora and language models for the co-official languages (Catalan, Galician, Basque and Valencian). These resources include text and voice data essential for training AI systems, such as voice assistants and machine translators.
Multilingual models
Neural language models have been developed and updated that allow the inclusion of co-official languages in advanced technological applications. These models are designed to improve the accuracy and functionality of AI tools in multilingual contexts.
Data Publication
ILENIA has made the data and metadata generated through the Hugging Face platform available to the research and developer community. This facilitates collaboration and access to linguistic resources for the development of new applications, thus reinforcing the resilience of languages.
Incorporation into platforms
The project has begun to implement and adapt modules and libraries for Catalan, Basque, Valencian and Galician on reference platforms, increasing the visibility and use of these languages in the digital sphere.
Importance of multilingualism in technological and economic development
Multilingualism plays a crucial role in technological and economic development, esp. By integrating multiple co-official languages into AI applications, ILENIA not only preserves and promotes linguistic diversity, but also drives digital inclusion. The adaptation of technologies such as voice assistants and automatic translators to various languages allows greater accessibility and participation in the global market, benefiting companies and public administrations that operate in a multilingual environment. Economically, multilingualism opens new market opportunities by allowing companies to offer personalized and accessible services in different languages. Additionally, it fosters innovation by providing richer and more diverse data and language models. In the context of ILENIA, this linguistic integration contributes to a more competitive and equitable digital economy, strengthening the presence and impact of co-official languages in the technological landscape.
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