Switzerland has announced the launch of Apertus, a new open-source large language model (LLM). Developed by researchers at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), Apertus is positioned as a transparent and multilingual alternative to proprietary models from large tech companies.
The model is available in two sizes: an 8-billion-parameter version suitable for individual use and a 70-billion-parameter version for more demanding applications. The name "Apertus," Latin for "open," reflects the project's commitment to open-source principles, with its architecture, training data, and model weights being publicly available.
Apertus is designed to support multilingual applications and is intended for the public good, emphasizing ethical AI practices and compliance. The model is available on the Hugging Face platform, allowing developers to build a variety of applications, including chatbots and translation tools. This initiative is a significant step towards fostering AI sovereignty and innovation within Switzerland and the broader open-source community.