Spotlight On France

A French large language model adds European context and nuance to the dominant artificial intelligence being developped by US tech giants and China. Is France really being "flooded" with immigrants? The numbers say no, but the feeling remains. And the mixed legacy of a landmark law on disability and inclusion, 20 years later. Countries are looking for sovereignty in artificial intelligence and at a major AI summit in Paris this week, France and the EU backed a "third path" approach to AI – midway between the US' private tech firm-dominated model and China's state-controlled technology. With a focus on regulation to ensure trust, France is creating public/private partnerships, and encouraging companies to develop home-grown products. Linagora, an open-source software developper, recently released a large language model (LLM) trained on French and European content, in contrast to American LLMs like ChatGPT that are trained on mainly US content. While chatbot Lucie got off to a rocky start, Linagora's General Ma