The Secretariat for Digital Policies of the Department of Business and Employment of the Generalitat de Catalunya has launched the 'Aina Intel·ligència Territorial' competition , a competition that seeks to promote artificial intelligence solutions in Catalan that work to reduce social and digital gaps. In this sense, companies, entities and consortia with experience in artificial intelligence and language technologies can present their innovative, transformative and disruptive proposals that contribute to improving digital accessibility, promoting social inclusion and preserving the oral heritage of the Catalan territory.
Developed by the i2CAT research center and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the competition is part of the AINA Project , which aims to generate and make available to citizens linguistic resources, corpora and computational models in the Catalan language that allow organizations to create applications based on artificial intelligence and language technologies easily in Catalan, contributing to guaranteeing digital sovereignty and the full presence of Catalan in the era of artificial intelligence. The competition also has funding from the Nuclear Transition Funds, which accompany the economic and social transformation of the territories facing the progressive closure of the Ascó and Vandellòs nuclear power plants. The 'Aina Territorial Intelligence' competition poses three central challenges to promote the creation of artificial intelligence solutions in Catalan that respond to current needs: artificial intelligence to address unwanted loneliness, solutions that help detect, prevent or reduce situations of loneliness, especially in older people or people in a situation of vulnerability, using Catalan language technologies adapted to local dialect varieties, artificial intelligence to reduce digital gaps, solutions that guarantee fluid, natural and accessible interaction for all people, regardless of their digital skills or technological knowledge, and artificial intelligence to preserve the oral heritage of the territory, solutions that contribute to preserving, revitalizing and disseminating oral and intangible heritage, promoting citizen participation and the transmission of cultural legacy among future generations.
A professional jury will select nine finalist proposals, three for each challenge, who will receive 2,000 euros. From these nine finalist proposals, three winning proposals will be chosen, one for each challenge, who will obtain a contract of up to 44,000 euros to create, develop and test the solution through a six-month pilot project in collaboration with the i2CAT research center. Until next Monday, January 26, at 5 p.m., interested organizations can submit their most innovative and transformative proposals through the Public Procurement Platform of the Generalitat de Catalunya.