JAKARTA -- Indonesia's IT giant GoTo and major telecom Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison have launched the nation's first home-grown, full-scale, generative artificial intelligence service supporting local languages.
GoTo Group CEO Patrick Walujo said the launch marks a "major leap forward in building a uniquely Indonesian AI ecosystem," speaking at a ceremony held in Jakarta in June.
The 70 billion-parameter Sahabat-AI large language model supports five languages -- including Javanese and Sundanese in addition to Indonesian. Larger parameters in AI indicate improved accuracy and reliability.
This comes as competition grows tougher with U.S.-based generative AI companies that are also working on models that support Indonesian.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country with 280 million people, and more than 500 local languages are spoken there.
Sahabat-AI was offered as open source software to other researchers last November, with leading universities like the University of Indonesia and Gadjah Mada University as well as key media groups taking part in its development. The focus was on improving the program's capacity to handle local languages and information.
The new AI model is available through GoTo's app GoPay, among others. Users can text questions like "What kind of person is President Prabowo?" The AI tool then provides information in natural Indonesian. Many of the sources cited come from Indonesian media.
U.S. tech companies are also expanding their generative AI services in Indonesia in hopes of capturing some of the country's massive market.
Microsoft has been promoting the Copilot generative AI tool by making it available in Indonesian, and CEO Satya Nadella announced a $1.7 billion investment in the country during a visit in April last year. OpenAI is also working on making its ChatGPT tool compatible with Indonesian.
As part of its trade deal with the Trump administration, the Indonesian government will allow personal data to be transferred from Indonesia to the U.S., according to the joint statement released July 22.
Sahabat-AI, meanwhile, stores and processes data entirely within the country's borders.
