Sovereign Australia AI, a new home-grown challenger to global artificial intelligence (AI) giant ChatGPT, is taking an ethical approach to the sector by earmarking at least $10 million to source copyrighted materials needed for its models.
The company, which has also teamed up with Sydney-based group Sharon AI for a record-breaking investment in domestic commercial AI infrastructure, says the move underscores its mission to create AI models that are Australian owned, Australian controlled and trained with ethically sourced datasets.
The launch today of Sovereign Australia AI comes on the heels of Melbourne-based AI developer Maincode last month announcing plans to take on ChatGPT with its own large language model (LLM) known as Matilda.
Founded by Troy Neilson and Simon Kriss, Sovereign Australia AI today announced that, in partnership with Sharon AI, it has placed Australia's largest-ever order for sovereign AI capacity comprising 256 of the latest Nvidia Blackwell B200 GPUs.
The company says this will power model development at a scale previously unseen in the country, creating a sovereign capability to create LLMs that are on par with many foreign frontier models.
The hardware will be hosted in secure, Australian-based data centres operated by Brisbane-headquartered NEXTDC (ASX: NXT) which the company says ensures data sovereignty and compliance with Australian privacy and security standards.
Sovereign Australia AI has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Australian Computer Society to develop a bespoke AI capability for Australia’s peak professional body for the ICT sector.
Kriss, the Sovereign Australia AI CEO, says today’s launch marks a critical step towards securing Australia’s digital future.
“We are already seeing how AI is shaping the way people think, work and engage with information,” says Kriss.
“If the foundational AI models Australians rely on are built offshore, we risk losing control over how our national values are represented.
“Sovereign Australia AI will ensure we have a homegrown alternative that is ethical, transparent and built for trust. We believe, as an industry, we must define what we mean when we say ‘Ethical AI’ - simply saying you are ethical is not enough.”
In pursuit of this goal, Sovereign Australia AI has set aside $10 million to compensate copyright holders whose data is used to train its initial models.
Sovereign Australia AI says users will know how its models are built, what data they are trained on and that they reflect Australian values.
“We want to set that benchmark high; users should be able to understand what datasets the AI they use is trained on,” says Kriss.
“They should be able to be aware of how the data has been curated. They should expect that copyright holders whose data was used to make the model more capable are compensated. That’s what we will bring to the table.”
Neilson, fellow co-founder and CTO of Sovereign Australia AI, says the company’s focus is on sovereignty and trust rather than competition.
“Building sovereign AI capabilities here at home is a significant technological challenge, but we have the expertise in Australia to get the job done,” he says.
“We are not trying to directly compete with ChatGPT or other global models, because we don’t need to.
“Instead, we are creating our own foundational models that will serve as viable alternatives that better capture the Australian voice.
“There are many public and private organisations in Australia who will greatly benefit from a truly sovereign AI solution, but do not want to sacrifice real-world performance. Our Ginan and Australis models will fill that gap with a capable, ethical alternative.”
Kriss says the emergence of home-grown competitors, such as Maincode’s Matilda, are a welcome sign for the sector domestically.
“We applaud all of our industry colleagues for their work,” Kriss tells Business News Australia.
“In fact, this is one of our company values - we applaud loudly. We hope that our work inspires even more truly sovereign built, owned and controlled solutions.”
Kriss says it’s important to note the difference between sovereign technology that is built in Australia and “owned here” and secure or private technology that is built overseas but “hosted here”.
“We believe that our work will stand up for itself and in doing so will articulate our value proposition to the market,” he says.
“To date we are not aware of anyone else planning to build a 700 billion-plus parameter model. And if someone else does, we will applaud their work too. That’s Australian.”
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