Collaboration between Orange and OpenAI broadens, aiming to deliver autonomous AI offerings with a focus on data sovereignty.
Orange, the global telecommunications company, has partnered with OpenAI, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) research and deployment company, to drive digital inclusion and AI innovation across Africa. As one of the first companies globally to deploy OpenAI's new open models as an early access partner, Orange is set to reap numerous benefits from this collaboration.
Secure and Customizable AI Ecosystem
Orange's deployment of OpenAI's advanced open-weight reasoning models (gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b) within its own trusted infrastructure offers several specific benefits and use cases.
One of the key advantages is data sovereignty and security. By running these OpenAI models entirely within its sovereign infrastructure, ranging from large cloud data centers in France to smaller on-premises edge servers across 26 countries, Orange ensures that sensitive data remains under strict control. Compliance with diverse national regulations throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is ensured, ensuring that data privacy and regulatory requirements are met.
Orange's AI teams customize and distill the base open-weight models for specific tasks, creating smaller sub-models tailored to particular use cases. This approach enables more effective performance in targeted areas such as network automation, enterprise services, and internal operations, improving efficiency and driving cost savings.
Network Management and Automation
The models support advanced AI tools for network diagnostics, automation, and performance optimization, helping to cut operational costs and improve network reliability and efficiency.
Support for African Languages and Digital Inclusion
Orange leverages OpenAI’s models to address the lack of AI support for over 2,000 African regional languages by fine-tuning the models with collected local language data. This facilitates voice recognition, translation, and AI-powered customer care solutions tailored to African markets, promoting digital inclusion in 18 African countries.
Enterprise and Customer Service Innovations
Customized AI models feed into Orange’s ‘Live Intelligence’ AI solutions for enterprises and enhance customer service experiences, including innovative support for regional languages and operational excellence across its wide footprint.
Alignment with Responsible and Sustainable AI
Orange’s deployment follows a “responsible AI” strategy focusing on high performance with reduced energy consumption and lower computing costs. This supports sustainability goals, including a significant emissions reduction target and ethical AI governance.
Sovereign AI Offering and Compliance
By hosting AI locally, Orange meets the growing demand for sovereign AI solutions that respect data privacy and regulatory requirements, positioning itself as a leader in ethical AI deployment across multiple regions.
In summary, Orange’s use of OpenAI’s advanced open-weight reasoning models within its trusted infrastructure enables a versatile, secure, and responsible AI ecosystem supporting network efficiency, regional language inclusion (especially in Africa), enterprise innovation, and compliance with complex data sovereignty demands.
Innovative Applications and Services
The deployment of OpenAI's open-weight reasoning models will contribute to the development of numerous innovative applications and services to improve the daily lives of Orange customers. These applications and services include enhanced customer experience, smarter networks, and business solutions for enterprise customers.
Orange's deep AI engineering talent allows it to customize and distill the OpenAI models for specific tasks, ensuring that the models are tailored to the needs of its customers.
Orange's customers across its 18-country footprint in Africa will be able to communicate naturally in their local languages with customer support, sales, and marketing.
Open Source AI Models
In the future, Orange will release the customized AI models in open source for free, to local government authorities to use across its public services. This move demonstrates Orange's commitment to making AI technology accessible and beneficial to all, particularly in underserved regions of the world.
Frugal AI Approach
Orange's 'frugal' AI approach strives for high performance with less computing power, less data, and less energy. This approach ensures that AI technology can be deployed effectively in resource-constrained environments, making it a valuable tool for promoting digital inclusion and economic development in Africa.
Collaboration for the Benefit of Society
Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer at OpenAI, comments that their ongoing work with Orange shows how forward-thinking businesses can use OpenAI's open models to solve real-world problems. Steve Jarrett, Chief AI Officer at Orange, states that the collaboration with OpenAI is foundational to their strategy of using state-of-the-art AI models that are both trusted and responsible.
Orange and OpenAI see this collaboration as a blueprint for responsible deployment of state-of-the-art AI at scale. By working together, they aim to harness AI for the benefit of society, promoting digital inclusion, and driving innovation across Africa and beyond.
- By deploying OpenAI's advanced models within its own infrastructure, Orange ensures that sensitive data remains secure and under strict control, particularly in complying with diverse national regulations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, thus promoting data privacy and regulatory requirements.
- In partnership with OpenAI, Orange utilizes advanced AI tools to develop innovative applications and services, such as voice recognition, translation, and AI-powered customer care solutions, specifically tailored to African markets, thereby promoting digital inclusion and improving the daily lives of customers across 18 African countries.
