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Title: Switzerland Releases Open-Source AI Model Built For Privacy

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/03/2125...

Switzerland has launched Apertus, a fully open-source, multilingual LLM
trained on 15 trillion tokens and over 1,000 languages. "What distinguishes
Apertus from many other generative AI systems is its commitment to complete
openness," reports CyberInsider. From the report: Unlike popular proprietary
models, where users can only interact via APIs or hosted interfaces, Apertus
provides open access to its model weights, training datasets, documentation,
and even intermediate checkpoints. The source code and all training materials
are released under a permissive open-source license that allows commercial
use. Since the full training process is documented and reproducible,
researchers and watchdogs can audit the data sources, verify compliance with
data protection laws, and inspect how the model was trained. Apertus'
development explicitly adhered to Swiss data protection and copyright laws,
and incorporated retroactive opt-out mechanisms to respect data source
preferences. From a privacy perspective, Apertus represents a compelling
shift in the AI landscape. The model only uses publicly available data,
filtered to exclude personal information and to honor opt-out signals from
content sources. This not only aligns with emerging regulatory frameworks
like the EU AI Act, but also provides a tangible example of how AI can be
both powerful and privacy-respecting. According to ETH Zurich's Imanol
Schlag, technical lead of the project at ETH Zurich, Apertus is "built for
the public good" and is a demonstration of how AI can be deployed as a public
digital infrastructure, much like utilities or transportation. The model is
available via Swisscom's Sovereign Swiss AI Platform. It's also available
through Hugging Face and the Public AI Inference Utility.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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