Orange OpenTech 2024: GenAI for B2B and LLMs for African communities

Orange Business has announced the launch of a multi-LLM GenAI solution for businesses of all sizes, and local authorities.

The “Live Intelligence” offering aims to democratise access to GenAI for European companies, starting in France early next year.

Orange Business says its tool will allow European businesses to keep their data within the continent and tackle the issue of “Shadow AI,” which refers to employees using free online solutions, risking the exposure of sensitive data.

50,000 Orange Business employees have already used the solution for internal operations.

“Live Intelligence enables all businesses, regardless of their size or sector, to leverage the power of GenAI to improve operational efficiency and customer experience without compromising the security of their data,” said Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, Chief Executive Officer of Orange Business.

Mousnier-Lompré added: “AI is more than just a technology; it represents a fundamental shift in how we envision future applications.”

Orange Business made the announcement at its annual OpenTech event, in which Orange also announced a digital inclusion project with Meta and OpenAI.

The partnership aims to develop AI models that understand regional African languages. The goal is to create custom AI models for customer support and sales, allowing users to communicate in their local languages.

These open-source models will be available for non-commercial use, supporting public health, education, and other services.

By collaborating with local startups and tech companies, Orange said it hopes to bridge the digital divide in Africa. It will focus on regional languages like Wolof and Pulaar, spoken by 16 million and 6 million people, respectively, in West Africa.

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Starting in 2025, the initiative will fine-tune AI models such as OpenAI’s ‘Whisper’ and Meta’s ‘Llama’ to better understand African languages.

The long-term goal is to cover all languages across Orange’s 18-country footprint.

“This multilingual issue is a challenge because we serve clients in 17 countries in Africa, yet in those 17 countries, there are 948 languages,” said Elizabeth Tchoungui, executive vice president of group social responsibility at Orange.

She added that Orange launched a chatbot in Senegal that understood Wolof. Examples of its use include mothers talking to the chatbot to find out information on vaccines and their local healthcare centre.

“Wolof and Pulaar are both languages not well represented today in both spoken and written form,” explained Steve Jarrett, chief AI officer at Orange Innovation. “As a result, in the models trained by these companies, like our partners OpenAI and Meta, these languages are not well represented.”

He added: “I think Orange is perfectly positioned because of the deep technical expertise we have in our teams at Orange Innovation, and also the teams in the regions and countries [we work in], and all of the local partners that we work with to get high quality, and non-biased samples of these languages.”

Orange’s telecom services are present in 18 countries across Africa.

In addition, Orange has secured direct access to OpenAI’s models, which aim to help improve solutions across Europe, including AI-driven voice interactions for customers.