VEON Ltd. announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Beeline Kazakhstan, the GSMA and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center -Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion to explore collaboration on the development of artificial intelligence and language technologies for languages with low digital resources. The parties will explore collaboration opportunities focusing on the development of mechanisms and documentation on language models and AI systems for under-resourced languages, including the local languages of the countries where VEON operates. The MoU was signed by the four parties during M360 Eurasia.

The event, opening in Baku, welcomes global connectivity leaders and policymakers for two days of discussion, debate and networking. Catalan is spoken by 10 million people, spread across various parts of Spain and other areas of Europe, such as Andorra and Alghero. For this reason, the BSC Language Technologies unit has as a priority generating digital resources to guarantee the presence of Catalan in the digital world, while making these resources useful for other languages with the same objective. Operating in countries that are home to 7% of the global population that mostly speak under-sourced languages,VEON is committed to addressing the AI language gap by supporting the usage of low-resource languages in AI, starting with Kazakhstan where Beeline Kazakhstan?s IT subsidiary QazCode already launched Kaz-RoBERTA-conversational ?

a Kazakh-language AI module supporting customer service in Beeline Kazakhstan?s digital applications. Key to the partnership will be the GSMA Foundry innovation accelerator, an initiative that brings together mobile operators and the wider technology industry, to help members forge the digital future by rapidly developing real-world solutions to industry challenges. Cooperation will take place within the scope of Aina Alliance, a collaboration between the Government of Catalonia and the GSMA, which builds on the Aina Project promoted and financed by the Government of Catalonia, and which seeks to support the presence of non-global languages in artificial intelligence models, enabling speakers of all languages to participate fully in the evolution of the digital world.

VEON is the first pilot in the partnership, with the Aina Alliance now inviting other mobile operator partners and organizations to take part in addressing the AI Language gap through collaborative effort.