The Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (ALT-EDIC) was proposed in December 2023 as one of the first European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC). On 7 February 2024, the European Commission officially set up the ALT-EDIC with the Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/458. Coordinated by France, the ALT-EDIC is supported by a number of Member States, among which Italy.
ALT-EDIC’s mission is to develop a common European infrastructure in Language Technologies, focussing particularly on Large Language Models. It seeks to:
- improve European competitiveness;
- increase the availability of European language data;
- uphold Europe’s linguistic diversity and cultural richness.
The European Language Data Space (LDS) is an EU initiative designed to create a centralised platform for sharing and monetising language data across industries like publishing, language technology, and media. Launched in January 2023, the LDS aims to:
- enhance data accessibility;
- support compliance with EU regulations;
- boost innovation in AI and language technology.
LDS emphasizes data sovereignty, allowing contributors to retain control over their data while promoting secure, EU-compliant data exchanges.
CNR-ILC’s contribution
The LDS and ALT-EDIC initiatives are closely linked. The LDS initiative is creating the infrastructure and governance framework that will enable the sharing and reuse of language data necessary to develop Large Language Models. The ALT-EDIC will ensure the long term sustainability of the LDS. Together, these two initiatives will help to create a single digital market for language technologies in Europe.
The Italian government has delegated Cnr-Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” (CNR-ILC), Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), and CINECA to join ALT-EDIC. Specifically, CNR-ILC contributes staff expertise for policy, technical support, and diverse Italian datasets hosted by CLARIN-IT and used to train models such as GePpeTto.
CNR-ILC participates in the LDS initiative by organising a country workshop, that will bring together experts from the Industry, Public Administration and Research to discuss the importance of language data for the development of trustable and reliable Language Technologies and AI-based tools for Italian.