Telecommunications company Orange of France will incorporate artificial intelligence models developed by OpenAI for African languages.
Orange, the French telecom giant, is taking significant strides in advancing artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa. The company is partnering with OpenAI to deploy open-weight AI models, specifically gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, customized for over 2,000 African languages.
This initiative is a crucial step towards addressing Africa's linguistic diversity while promoting data sovereignty and local hosting of AI workloads in 26 countries, primarily across Africa. Steve Jarrett, Chief AI Officer at Orange, plans to make the fine-tuned models available for free to local governments and public authorities.
The current phase of the project involves deploying these models within Orange’s data centers to support AI-powered solutions such as natural-language voice assistants, chatbots, regional language customer support, and network automation. The models are being fine-tuned with local African languages to enable accurate voice recognition and translation services, compliant with data regulations in both African countries and France.
Orange is also open-sourcing these customized models, underpinning AI democratization across the continent. This move could mark a significant step toward addressing the underrepresentation of African languages in mainstream AI development, as highlighted by a study by Cornell University and a report by Nature.
Looking ahead, Orange's plans include expanding AI-driven financial inclusion, network optimization, and scaling the Telecom-AI convergence strategy. The company aims to capture a $50 billion market by 2034 and advance its status as a leader in ethical AI deployment with measurable financial and environmental benefits.
Orange began using OpenAI's Whisper speech model earlier this year for African languages and is now expanding to more complex large language model (LLM) tasks. The company operates in 18 African countries and signed an agreement with OpenAI last year, granting it early access to experimental AI models.
In summary, Orange’s AI initiative is well underway, combining localized AI model deployment tailored for Africa’s linguistic diversity with a sovereign and ethical AI approach. The company is focused on expanding AI accessibility, financial inclusion, operational sustainability, and public service applications through open-source AI tailored to African languages and contexts.
This AI initiative by Orange, a French telecom giant, is not only tailored towards addressing Africa's linguistic diversity but also aims to democratize AI across the continent through open-sourcing customized models. Moreover, alongside improving language support and customer service, Orange is equally interested in using AI to advance business areas like financial inclusion, network optimization, and the telecom-AI convergence strategy, with a goal of capturing a $50 billion market by 2034.
