Meta Partners with Sarvam AI for Vernacular LLMs

Mumbai, Feb 29 (PTI) Global tech giant Meta is working with Sarvam AI which is building a Large Language Model (LLM) in vernacular languages, a top official said on Thursday.

The Silicon Valley company's head in India Sandhya Devanathan said the impact of the work being undertaken by Sarvam to overcome the restrictions posed by largely English LLMs till now, will be "exponential".

"The amount of effort that is going in to actually enable those in vernacular. In fact, we work with a company called Sarvam," Devanathan said, speaking at 'The Nudge Forum' here.

She said Sarvam has been using Meta's free-for-all Llama open-source models to build the LLMs and added that after the Hindi LLM, it will be rolling out to other languages.

"The incubation period may take a while, but then the impact of it will be exponential when you start thinking about the impact of what this can have across the length and breadth of India," she said.

LLM refers to an AI algorithm that uses deep learning techniques and large data sets to understand, summarize, generate and predict new content. As per experts, Generative AI is also closely connected with LLMs.

Devanathan said Meta, which was earlier known as Facebook, has been using AI for a long time in its business but added that it is Gen AI which has become the "buzzword" now.

She hinted that a fourth of the results put out by its recommendations on Instagram are now AI-generated.

The company also uses AI to keep its users safe on the platform, she said, adding that content is taken down even before people can see it. She also said that advertiser returns have increased almost by 30-35 per cent because of the use of AI.

It has a partnership with the state-promoted open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), where it has been focusing on skilling sellers, she said, mentioning that the work focuses on how to help small businesses registered on Whatsapp sell on ONDC.