French telecommunications company Orange will have direct access to OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) models under a new agreement signed by the two companies.
The agreement will provide Orange with direct access that includes data processing and hosting in European data centers and will facilitate early access to OpenAI’s latest AI models, Orange said in a Tuesday (Nov. 26) press release.
With this partnership and access, Orange will work to improve its existing solutions and develop new ones for other use cases, according to the release. For example, the firm will explore AI-based voice interactions with its customers.
“Orange is focused on delivering ‘Responsible AI,’ where the company carefully chooses the most appropriate and simplest solution for each AI use case,” the release said. “This approach means only using the latest Large Language Models where they are necessary and otherwise choosing simpler and cheaper solutions, thereby minimizing the impact on the environment as well as reducing cost for the many valuable AI use cases deployed across Orange.”
This announcement comes at a time when enterprise spending on generative AI has increased sixfold over the past year to reach $13.8 billion.
When reporting this data on Nov. 20, venture capital firm Menlo Ventures said 72% of enterprise IT decision-makers from companies with 50 or more employees expect to see broader adoption of generative AI “in the near term.”
Menlo Ventures Partner Joff Redfern said at the time in a press release that organizations are “moving beyond pilots to embedding AI at the core of their business strategies.”
Orange also said in its Tuesday press release that it will partner with OpenAI and Meta to fine-tune large language models (LLMs) to understand regional languages in Africa, starting with the Wolof and Pulaar languages that are spoken by 16 million people and 6 million people, respectively.
The telecommunications firm will use these AI models to deliver customer support and sales messages and will provide these models for use in public health, public education and other services, according to the release.
“Orange’s long-term goal is to work with many AI technology providers to enable future models to recognize all African languages spoken and written across Orange’s 18-country footprint in the region,” the release said.
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