AI paradigm shift: Building local AI models is now a national priority
Technology: Tech giants are increasingly investing in the development of national AI models. This initiative, called “sovereign artificial intelligence,” focuses on strengthening competitiveness by leveraging local infrastructures. Currently, leading language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Cloud use data centers located primarily in the United States. This reliance has raised concerns among European regulators, who view reliance on US technology as potentially harmful to their sector’s competitiveness and technological resilience – particularly the ability to maintain uninterrupted operations despite various threats.
The concept of data and technology sovereignty arises from a number of factors, including businesses reacting to new regulations. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates that companies manage their users’ data securely and compliantly, respecting their privacy rights. In addition, major decisions such as the European Court of Justice’s 2020 decision invalidating the prior EU-US data sharing framework highlight ongoing concerns about cross-border data protection.
Recent regulatory developments have driven a shift towards more localised cloud infrastructures, where data for a range of online services can be stored and processed. A notable example in Italy is the Italia 9b project, a language model trained specifically to cater to Italian linguistic data. This initiative underlines the drive to route AI outputs in local languages and cultural contexts.
