Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, in collaboration with LightOn, has launched NOOR, a 10 billion parameter Arabic natural language processing (NLP) model. The model was trained on a large, high-quality cross-domain Arabic dataset including web data, books, poetry, news, and technical information. It enables applications in automated summarization, chatbots, and personalized marketing. Why it matters: NOOR represents a significant advancement in Arabic NLP, potentially enabling more sophisticated AI applications tailored to the Arabic language and regional needs.
TII and LightOn have partnered to build the NOOR Platform for exascale computing, aimed at developing foundation models. The collaboration will leverage LightOn's expertise in large language models, with the first output being the largest Arabic language model to date. The platform will provide high-quality data pipelines and facilitate extreme-scale distributed training and serving. Why it matters: This partnership aims to establish Abu Dhabi as a center of AI excellence and boost the UAE's ambitions in high-tech innovation and NLP research.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University's Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) introduced Fanar, an Arabic-centric multimodal generative AI platform featuring the Fanar Star (7B) and Fanar Prime (9B) Arabic LLMs. These models were trained on nearly 1 trillion tokens and are designed to address different prompts through a custom orchestrator. Fanar includes a customized Islamic RAG system, a Recency RAG, bilingual speech recognition, and an attribution service for content verification, sponsored by Qatar's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Why it matters: The platform signifies a major step towards sovereign AI development in Qatar, providing advanced Arabic language capabilities and addressing regional needs.