A European country has launched the first open-source artificial intelligence model to limit U.S. dependence on its sovereignty push.
Portugal unveiled its first open source artificial intelligence model, Amalia, on Wednesday, joining a growing movement across Europe calling for greater AI sovereignty and less dependence on US providers.
The move follows similar efforts in other European countries, including France and Germany, where governments are backing homegrown AI companies such as Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha to provide alternatives to models developed by U.S. companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Large-scale language-based models are not intended for direct use by the general public, but as a foundational technology that public agencies, businesses, universities, and researchers can use to build AI-powered applications tailored to their needs.
The Portuguese model, named Amalia after the late Fado icon Amalia Rodríguez, was developed by a consortium of Portuguese universities and research institutes with government support and 5.5 million euros ($6.26 million) in EU recovery funds.
“Today, Europe’s strategic autonomy is intertwined with AI, perhaps more than ever before. This model will allow us to face the coming decades with greater sovereignty and less dependence,” Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said at the launch event.
Montenegro said Amalia will contribute to improving productivity across the public and private sectors, including banking, insurance, telecommunications and industry, while ensuring safety, adding: “We will continue to invest heavily in this project.”
Amalia’s large-scale 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, a decision support tool for the Portuguese Navy, an AI-powered teaching assistant for lesson planning, and a digital assistant to help countries deliver public services to their citizens.
Amalia also leverages Portugal’s investments in high-performance computing, including access to the Deucalion and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers, providing the computing power needed to train and run AI models at scale.
However, unlike commercial AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Amalia has not been released as a consumer chatbot.
Instead, it will serve as an open technology platform that public authorities, businesses, and researchers can build on to create their own AI applications.
Additionally, the first deployment will focus on Portuguese public administration, including education, defence, health, culture and civil services.
