Portugal introduced Amalia to reduce dependence on US AI providers and provide an open platform for public sector companies and researchers to build secure local AI applications.
Portugal announced the first open source release of an artificial intelligence model in Lisbon. This was part of Europe’s efforts to strengthen its sovereignty in the field of AI and reduce its dependence on suppliers from the United States.
The move follows similar efforts in other European countries, particularly France and Germany, where governments are supporting domestic AI companies such as Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha to create alternatives to models developed by US companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Instead of directly deploying models to the public sector, the basic large-scale language model was developed as a platform that government agencies, businesses, universities, and research institutes can use to build customized AI applications.
The Portuguese model Amalia, named after the late Fado icon Amalia Rodríguez, was created by a consortium of Portuguese universities and research institutes with government support and €5.5 million (equivalent to approximately US$6.3 million) from the EU Recovery Fund.
Europe’s strategic autonomy today is linked to artificial intelligence, perhaps more than ever before. This model will allow us to enter the coming decades with greater sovereignty and less dependence.
– Luis Montenegro
Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said that Amalia will contribute to increasing productivity in both the public and private sectors, especially banking, insurance, telecommunications and industry, while ensuring security, and confirmed that the government will continue to invest in the project.
Amalia was released under an open license along with its training dataset and source code.
Initial applications include a virtual guide to Portugal’s museums, a decision support tool for the Portuguese Navy, an AI assistant for lesson planning, and a digital assistant to help countries deliver public services to their citizens.
Amalia will also leverage Portugal’s investments in high-performance computing, including access to the Deucalion and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers, providing computing power for training and running AI models at scale.
The launch of Amalia highlights Europe’s growing ambition to develop open AI technologies and strengthen its sovereignty in the field of innovation.
