Orange gets down to business with GenAI

• Orange Business, in its latest push to “democratise” GenAI, has launched Live Intelligence
• Offered as software-as-a-service, the product is designed to allow businesses of all sizes to securely leverage GenAI to improve operational efficiency and customer experience
• Live Intelligence was developed internally by Orange innovation teams, which tested GenAI for a number of months with tens of thousands of employees
• In a separate AI announcement, Orange has partnered with OpenAI and Meta to “fine tune” AI LLMs to understand regional languages in Africa that are not currently understood by existing GenAI models

Orange Business, the enterprise services arm of the international telco giant, says it wants to “democratise” access to generative AI (GenAI). To that end, it has launched Live Intelligence, which it describes as a range of “plug-and-play” GenAI solutions for businesses “of all sizes”, as well as local authorities. 

Live Intelligence, which was unveiled this week during Orange’s Open Tech 2024 event in Paris, will be offered to customers initially in France, Orange’s domestic market, but will “soon” be expanded across the operator’s multiple European markets.

Live Intelligence is the outcome of Orange putting GenAI through its paces internally for a number of months, involving some 50,000 employees: Orange innovation teams essentially honed the product on the back of learnings gleaned from “transforming” the telco’s own work practices with GenAI. The importance of that internal initiative was highlighted by the operator’s chief technology and information officer (CTIO), Bruno Zerbib, and the telco’s group CTO and senior VP of Orange Innovation Networks, Laurent Leboucher, during a media briefing in London in October – see Orange hedges its GenAI bets, avoids LLM lock-in.

Making AI user friendly and easy to implement, says Orange, led to a spectacular in-house success: Rapid adoption of the latest AI solutions and “significant” internal efficiency gains. Now it wants to allow businesses to get in on the GenAI action through Live Intelligence, which has a new multi-LLM (large language model) offering “catering to the needs of both beginner and experienced users”; it is also offered in software-as-a-service (SaaS) mode to make adoption easier.

Orange highlights, too, that Live Intelligence “effectively addresses” the growing phenomenon of ‘shadow AI’ – the uncontrolled adoption by employees of free online solutions – which exposes companies to the risk of sensitive data leaks. And as a “responsible GenAI solution”, Orange makes the promise that companies’ data will be fully hosted in Europe.

“Live Intelligence enables all businesses, regardless of their size or sector, to leverage the power of GenAI to improve operational efficiency and customer experience without compromising the security of their data,” asserted Orange Business CEO Aliette Mousnier-Lompré. “AI is more than just a technology; it represents a fundamental shift in how we envision future applications,” she added.

Live Intelligence is the latest GenAI push by Orange Business. Back in March, it took the wraps off two GenAI solutions designed to help French businesses embrace the potential of the emerging technology: GPU (graphics processing unit)-as-a-service; and GenAI applications via a SaaS platform.

LLM “fine-tuning” for Africa

Coinciding with the Live Intelligence announcement, Orange said it will partner with OpenAI (which developed the popular GenAI chatbot ChatGPT) and Meta to “fine tune” AI LLMs to understand regional languages in Africa that are not currently understood by existing GenAI models.

On the one hand, Orange aims to develop custom AI models capable of allowing its customers to communicate naturally in their local languages for customer support and sales, while, on the other hand, these very same open-source AI models will be provided externally by Orange (with a free licence) for use in non-commercial areas, such as public health and public education. Work on the project is expected to start during the first half of next year.

The move is significant for Orange, as it is one of the most important mobile service providers in Africa, where it has operations in 17 markets across the continent and more than 140 million customers. Importantly, too, Africa is currently the main source of revenue and customer base growth for Orange, as was the case during the third quarter of this year. 

In addition, Orange has signed a European agreement with OpenAI, enabling it direct access to OpenAI’s models hosted and data-processed in European datacentres. In this way, said Orange, it will be able to improve existing GenAI solutions across its footprint, as well as get early access to OpenAI’s latest and most advanced AI models.

- Ken Wieland, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV