The ALT-EDIC held its first Assembly of Members on March 8th, 2024, hosted in Paris by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty.
The Assembly of Members enabled ALT-EDIC members to elect their first representatives for a 2-year term. Mr Thibault GROUAS and Mr Juan Martinez SAMALEA were elected chair and co-chair of the Assembly of Members, respectively. The Members also established ALT-EDIC’s implementation strategy during this meeting.
The ALT-EDIC aims to support the development of language technologies and to protect and enhance Europe’s cultural and linguistic heritage within an innovative, competitive, ethical and sovereign artificial intelligence ecosystem, while respecting copyright and related rights. The Alliance involves not only institutional partners, but also civil society, as many industrial groups and SMEs have expressed their interest in the project and the opportunities it represents. It will federate this ecosystem and create an industrial consortium that will guarantee the impact of the EDIC’s efforts on businesses.
Ms Rachida DATI, Minister of culture: « France is proud to host this Alliance for Language Technologies. Indeed, with its linguistic diversity, Europe must be able to develop a sovereign and competitive innovation ecosystem, complemented by national clusters such as LANGU:IA in France, to enable the emergence and sharing of giant, open and open-access language models that can enhance our cultural and linguistic heritage. »
Ms Marina FERRARI, Secretary of State for Digital Affairs: « This alliance will play a crucial role in strengthening Europe’s position in the artificial intelligence race. By making this European consortium the hub for the development of language models, this alliance will produce a double benefit, both for technology suppliers and for the dissemination of a competitive, high-performance offering to companies using AI. To achieve this, the Alliance will draw on the best technologies from our companies to provide services that will benefit a large number of users. In this ultra-competitive, innovation-driven field, acting as Europeans will be our greatest chance of success. »
English (UK)