Sweden needs good AI in Swedish and for that it requires a high-quality language model in Swedish, says Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) at a press conference.
Language models are not just translated words, but they carry history, culture, traditions, values, everything that is embedded in a language, Kristersson continues.
The project is supported by funding from the Wallenberg Foundations and by access to the Berzelius supercomputer at Linköping University. The model will be trained on a large amount of data from public sector organizations, along with material from Swedish literature and Swedish news media.
The Newspaper Publishers Association is involved in the project, and its chairman, Anders Eriksson, emphasizes that the initiative must be carried out with respect for copyright. Previously, the Newspaper Publishers Association, together with the Swedish Writers' Association and others, have criticized the plans to use the Royal Library's archives to train language models.
We feel much more secure with the current strategy. However, there is no compensation or anything like that, Anders Eriksson said.
The project is now being launched and most of the training of the model will take place in 2026.
