Dr. Ahmed Khalifa Elmagarmid, Executive Director, Qatar Computing Research Institute
Doha: Fanar initiative aims to bolster the global prominence of the Arabic language in AI technologies.
It aligns with the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030 and the Digital Agenda 2030, aiming to advance the digital economy and enhance strategic capabilities in AI and other emerging technologies that meet the needs of various sectors.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of World Summit AI (WSAI), yesterday Dr. Ahmed Khalifa Elmagarmid, Executive Director, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) shared insights on the role of AI in advancing education and research.
“Fanar is a large language model that is trained on Arabic content taken from the Qatari, Arabic and Islamic context and as such the answers you will get are sensitive to our culture,” Dr. Elmagarmid said.
Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani inaugurated the Arabic Artificial Intelligence Large Language Model (LLM) Fanar yesterday.
The project was announced at the World Economic Forum 2024, about 220 days ago. “Now we have built the model which was tested for over three months,” he added.
He noted that the launch of Fanar project is one of the building blocks leading to the Qatar National Vision 2030 and Digital Agenda 2030.
Qatar has taken big steps towards National AI Strategy and AI implementation plan.
Dr. Elmagarmid explained how the model is created; the data is collected to improve the quality.
“We have to ensure the data is of the highest quality. The model does content creation, creates images, imitates voice. It has a lot of features and there are features that we want to add which are not in it yet.”
Fanar’s capabilities extend to assisting students, researchers, and the public by providing accurate information and streamlining tasks, saving valuable time and effort.
In addition to generating high-quality Arabic text, Fanar facilitates the development of Arabic chatbots and virtual assistants for companies and institutions of all sizes, ensuring culturally appropriate responses.
“We have a whole department that works only on Arabic language technologies. We do machine translation, machine transcription, and also text to speech, speech to text. When we build Fanar, most of the technology that we used was technology that we developed ourselves. We use our own technology, so this is very important which is being used widely in many companies and we have done a lot of technology transfer,” he added.
Dr. Elmagarmid also addressed a panel session entitled ‘Bridging Perspectives: AI Transformation and its Global Impact,’ and highlighted the role of AI in addressing gaps for underserved communities.
“We are not trying to create a ChatGPT type in Fanar. This is going to be a specialised LLM that fits a niche we think is needed for internet users in the Middle East that the internet has left out a little bit, in content and social media. We see there’s a niche, which is where Fanar comes in, it’s for Arab language speakers.”
Dr. Elmagarmid’s vision for Fanar reflects the transformative potential of AI to uplift communities and enrich cultural identity, bridging gaps in digital inclusivity.
Fanar offers a comprehensive set of services, including translation, summarisation, and creative writing, empowering companies and institutions to effectively engage their Arabic-speaking audience.
By enhancing the Arabic user experience through accurate and culturally appropriate responses, the initiative drives broader technology integration into the daily lives and business activities of Arabic speakers.
