INSAIT presented BgGPT - the first Bulgarian language open artificial intelligence model

Bulgaria is one of the few countries to have developed an AI platform in its own language, as pointed out by Prof. Martin Vechev

16:57 15.01.2024 ~ 2 min read

The Institute for Computer Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Technologies (INSAIT) presented BgGPT - the first open AI language model adapted to use Bulgarian language and created for the needs of the Bulgarian government, scientists, business sector and all Bulgarian citizens.

The adaptation of the GPT technology to the Bulgarian language will enable more efficient creation and use of applications and solutions for the benefit of Bulgarian education, business, healthcare, public administration and other areas.

The language model is fully open with a permissive license and will be freely usable by public and private organizations. It will officially launch on 3 March (Bulgarian’s national holiday) at: https://bggpt.ai. Meanwhile, users can already register on the website to get early access.

GPT technology and the Bulgarian language

Large Language Models (LLM) made headlines in November 2022 when ChatGPT was released to the public. The chatbot has become a real sensation thanks to its ability to conduct dialogue in a human-like manner, as well as execute various commands to write essays, poems, emails, business plans and whatnot - admittedly, at a somewhat basic level in the beginning, but one that’s constantly improving.

The hype around ChatGPT has unleashed an AI avalanche – everyone was talking about artificial intelligence, and the tech giants started releasing their own versions. Their models constantly improve their ability to communicate in Bulgarian, but in the end, it remains a language that is relatively foreign to them - for the simple reason that they were mostly trained in English.

"Bulgaria is one of the few countries to have developed such a platform in its own language and whose information feed remains in our country and does not depend on foreign corporations," commented Prof. Martin Vechev, founder of INSAIT.

INSAIT explains that the first version of BgGPT was trained on more than 3 billion Bulgarian sentences and consists of more than 7 billion parameters.

In this way, we show that we can be a technological leader and not just a consumer," Vechev added.

Artificial intelligence has long been among the leading tech topics, but in the wake of ChatGPT, it has also become one of the hottest and most controversial ones. There is more and more active talk about the Fifth Industrial Revolution and the unprecedented economic and perhaps social change to arrive.

"The world's economies will be divided into those that use artificial intelligence and those that do not," Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov commented during the presentation of INSAIT's AI platform.