The German-based startup Aleph Alpha has recently gained attention in the field of artificial intelligence with its language model Luminous, which has scored similarly well in a standardized performance comparison with other leading AI models such as Open AI and Facebook’s Meta. The comparison was conducted with the help of the neutral “Evaluation Harness” test procedure of the open research and development community Eleuther AI. Luminous was pitted against Open AI’s GPT, Meta’s version, and the open language model Bloom, and had to solve tasks for classifying, evaluating, and creating texts, as well as answering questions about specific text content.

What’s remarkable about Luminous is that it marks the first time a European AI language model has landed on par with U.S. tech giants. Not only did it reach the same performance level as its competitors, but it was also much more efficient in doing so. Compared to the competition, Luminous has about half as many parameters (70 billion), which means it has twice the efficiency for the same level of performance.

The founder and CEO of Aleph Alpha, Jonas Andrulis, sees Luminous as a strong alternative in many environments and an important step towards Europe’s technology sovereignty. Andrulis emphasized that the startup’s focus on efficient AI language models can help European companies gain more autonomy in the technology field.

Unlike Open AI, which offers a mass product for private consumers, Aleph Alpha focuses on providing AI solutions for companies or public administration. Its Luminous language model has already been integrated into the “Lumi” citizen assistant for the city of Heidelberg, which is able to respond to completely individual, non-pre-programmed questions from citizens. This makes it possible to make information accessible to people who often had problems communicating with public authorities in the past due to poor spelling or other language problems.

Aleph Alpha’s Luminous language model is a strong contender in the AI language model space, offering efficiency and high performance, while also addressing the needs of companies and public administration. Its integration into the “Lumi” citizen assistant is a promising step towards making information more accessible to all. With its focus on efficient AI solutions, Aleph Alpha is contributing to Europe’s technology sovereignty and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the field of artificial intelligence.