IN its move to spur the adoption of artificial intelligence in Malaysia, local technology outfit Alto Ai and China-based Zhipu AI have collaborated to launch the first Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model.
Both companies will join forces to create a future where AI empowers the day-to-day life of every individual and the daily operation of every business.
Alto Ai executive director Sylvester Wong Hsiang Hui said the initiative will have a significant impact in Malaysia, as well as Southeast Asia.
"The idea is to make AI easier to use, more adaptable, and able to meet the diverse needs of the community," he said.
"By launching the Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model, Alto Ai has taken an important step towards achieving this goal. We believe that AI has a transformative power that can drive processes and innovation," he said.
Wong said that Southeast Asia is a region with rich linguistic diversity, and Bahasa Malaysia is one of the languages.
"However, AI models often have difficulty fully understanding news and context in different languages around the world, and the Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model is designed to solve this challenge," he said.
"Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model will provide businesses with the ability to enhance customer interaction, automate content creation, and develop culturally and linguistically sensitive intelligent applications.
"Whether you are in healthcare, finance, education, media or other fields, the Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model will provide tools to communicate with the audience in more meaningful ways. This is not only the development of technology, but also one step forward in making artificial intelligence a tool that truly reflects the richness of regional languages and cultures," he added.
In addition to the Bahasa Malaysia Large Language Model, Alto Ai and its partners are also committed to launching a Model as a Service (MaaS) platform for serving the public. The platform provided will bring groundbreaking changes to developers, making it easier and more scalable for developers to use relevant AI models through user-friendly application programming interfaces (APIs).
Sylvester emphasized that ALTO·Ai understands that not all companies have the resources and technical expertise to build and maintain complex AI systems.
"That's why we designed the Model as a Service (MaaS) platform to popularise AI and make it available to all companies, whether they are startups or established companies."
He said that by integrating advanced AI technology through the Model as a Service (MaaS) platform, applications will become simple and efficient, allowing developers to create smarter and more effective solutions without the need for large infrastructure or deep technical knowledge.
The event saw four Memorandum of Understanding and Memorandum of Agreement being signed. These partners include Zhipu·AI, Universiti Malaya, Axcova Sdn Bhd, Shangya Sdn Bhd and Beijing Knownsz Information Technology Co Ltd.
Universiti Malaya's Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Prof Chan Chee Seng, said AI is going to be very, very big in the coming years.
"The collaboration with Alto Ai will enable UM to develop AI applications that can serve various verticals like banking, education, government, education, etc," he said.
"When we talk about training a large language model, the issue is that we don't have the infrastructure and it's very expensive to build. However, with the collaboration with Alto Ai and Zhipu AI, this will no longer be an issue as there will be an AI lab in the UM, making the university to have one of the largest compute power of AI in this country," he added.
"These collaborations will open up the opportunity for the students as well as the industry," he said.
Besides that, some of the students will also have a six-month internship programme with Ziphu AI in its headquarters in Beijing, China.