Russia launches its own conversational robot

The Russian technology company Sber announced on Monday the creation of its own conversational robot and thus joined the current race for artificial intelligence, symbolized by the phenomenon generated by the American program ChatGPT.

Sber “launches its own version” of a chatbot, whose name will be “GigaChat” and will represent “a first” for Russia, this state-owned company said in a statement posted on its website.

The group specified that initially it will be “available only in test mode, with an invitation” from the company.

GigaChataccording to Sber, will be able to “hold a conversation, write texts, answer factual questions”, in addition to “computer programming” and “create images from descriptions”.

Guerman Gref, president and CEO of the company, assured that the launch of this conversational bot It represents “an advance for the whole of the vast universe of Russian technologies”.

Russia has been trying for years to reinforce its digital sovereignty and reinforce its control of this sector, a trend that was accentuated after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which led to a wave of economic sanctions by Western countries and the closure and blockade of web pages and social networks by Moscow.

The launch of GigaChat comes just a few months after ChatGPT, a conversational robot financed by the American giant Microsoft and which caused a sensation due to its ability to answer complex questions or program a computer in a few seconds in a few seconds, launched in November last year.