Santiago, Chile, Oct. 5, 2025 – Hey, exciting news from Latin America! A new AI project called Latam-GPT is here to shake things up. It’s the first big AI model made right in the region, for the people there. Led by Chile’s National Center for Artificial Intelligence, or CENIA, this open and team-based effort wants to build tech that fits local needs.
Picture this: An AI that really gets the languages, cultures, and daily life in places like Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Latam-GPT trains on over eight terabytes of data from 20 Latin American countries and Spain. That’s 2.6 million documents packed with regional info. With 50 billion parameters – yeah, that’s like GPT-3.5 – it can handle translations, smart thinking, and cultural chats better than many others.
No big rivalry with giants like OpenAI or Google. Instead, it’s all about helping everyday folks. Think better tools for school, farming, health, or fun stories from home. More than 33 schools and tech groups from around the area are joining in, sharing data and know-how. It’s open-source, so anyone – from small startups to local governments – can tweak it for their own use.
Chile’s stepping up big time with a new supercomputer setup at the University of Tarapacá in Arica. They spent $10 million on 12 super-fast nodes with Nvidia H200 GPUs. This is the first time Latin America has homegrown power like this for AI research. No more full reliance on far-away cloud services.
The first version drops later this year, with plans for even bigger updates by 2030. They want multimodal AI that works with pictures and videos too. The dream? Latin America not just using tech from outside, but creating its own. Students learning in their own words, farmers getting climate tips that make sense, doctors with tools built for local health issues.
This feels like a fresh start for tech fairness in the region. Latam-GPT isn’t just code – it’s a group hug for smarter, homegrown solutions. Can’t wait to see it grow!