Portuguese ChatGPT could cost “between 10 and 20 million euros”

The announcement of a Portuguese artificial intelligence model was made at WebSummit 2024 by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, but perhaps it was a little overlooked by the Portuguese population. According to one estimate, the Portuguese ChatGPT could cost “between 10 and 20 million euros”.

Portuguese ChatGPT: 10 to 20 million euros is not an unreasonable amount
Arlindo Oliveira, former president of Instituto Superior Técnico, is one of the Portuguese names of reference in the area of ​​Artificial Intelligence. In an interview with RR, the professor cited some advantages and difficulties in creating a language model in Portuguese, a ChatGPT style.
Arlindo Oliveira said that "several million euros" are needed to create a Portuguese ChatGPT, that is, an LLM (Large Language Model) and said that "an expense of between 10 and 20 million euros, with the Portuguese version. “It seems to me to be a not very unreasonable amount”.
In a note following the announcement, to the newspaper Público, Luís Montenegro's executive revealed that the idea is also to reduce the "serious risks" of "dependence on foreign LLMs".  Luís Montenegro assured that the Government is committed to "taking advantage of this virtuous triangle between science, capital, human capital and financial capital and entrepreneurship" through public policies such as lowering taxes or the "war on bureaucracy".

The Portuguese LLM will be developed by a collaborative consortium of research centers linked to universities in Lisbon (Faculty of Science and Technology of Nova and Instituto Superior Técnico, of the University of Lisbon), in conjunction with the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Center for Responsible AI and should be ready in the first quarter of 2025.