Portugal debuts first open-source AI model as Europe pushes for tech sovereignty

One of the European country has launched its first open-source artificial intelligence model to limit the U.S. reliance in sovereignty push.

Portugal unveiled its first open-source artificial intelligence model 'Amalia,' on Wednesday joining a growing push across Europe for greater AI sovereignty and reduced reliance on U.S. providers.

The move follows similar initiatives ‌in other European countries, including France and Germany, where governments have backed own AI companies such as Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha to provide alternatives to models developed by U.S. firms including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

Rather than being used directly by the public, the large language foundation model is intended as a base technology that public institutions, companies, universities and researchers can use to build AI-powered applications tailored to their needs.

The Portuguese model, dubbed Amalia in honour of the late fado icon Amalia Rodrigues, was developed by a consortium of Portuguese universities and research institutions, with government backing and €5.5 million ($6.26 million) in EU recovery funds.

Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro told the launch event, "Europe's strategic autonomy is today, perhaps more than ever, tied to AI. This model will enable us to face the coming decades ‌with greater sovereignty and less dependence."

Montenegro said Amalia would help boost productivity across the public and private sectors, including banking, insurance, telecommunications and industry, while ensuring security, adding: "We will continue to invest heavily in this project."

The Amalia large language model, along with its training dataset and source code, is released under an open-source license.

Initial applications include a virtual guide for Portugal's museums, decision-support tools for the Portuguese Navy, an AI-powered teaching assistant for lesson planning, and a digital assistant to help the state deliver public services to citizens.

Amalia also leverages Portugal's investment in high-performance computing, including access to the Deucalion and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers, giving it the computing power needed to train and run large AI models.

Unlike commercial AI assistants such as ChatGPT, however, Amalia is not being launched as a consumer-facing chatbot.

Instead, it will serve as an open technological platform that public institutions, companies and researchers can build upon to create their own AI applications.

Additionally, the first deployments will focus on Portugal’s public administration, including education, defence, healthcare, culture and citizen services.