The Heidelberg AI start-up Aleph Alpha has released a performance report on its AI language model, Luminous. The research compares Luminous to the models from GPT-3 and ChatGPT developer OpenAI, among others. The scientific comparison included tasks related to text classification, evaluation, and generation, as well as answering questions about specific text contents. The result is impressive – with Luminous, a European AI language model is, for the first time, on par with the world’s leading AI language models, while being much more efficient. In comparison, Luminous is with 70 billion parameters only half as big as its competitors, who have around 175 billion parameters, and thus has twice the efficiency at the same level of performance.

“A systematic comparison of the best language models shows that our team is playing in the Champions League. What our customers and partners confirm based on their use cases can also be shown in the sum of the tests we have conducted: Luminous is a strong alternative in many environments and thus serves as an important step towards Europe’s technological sovereignty.” (Jonas Andrulis, founder & CEO of Aleph Alpha).

Luminous is twice as efficient which translates to a better scaling and lower resource consumption when in use. With the citizen assistant Lumi for the city of Heidelberg, a similar system to ChatGPT (OpenAI) was realised in October 2022. Lumi was developed based on Luminous and is for the first time able to address individual, non-programmed questions from citizens. It simplifies the information and makes it accessible to people who have previously found official communication inaccessible due to its complexity or struggled with spelling or language. Lumi’s statements are only based on the data provided by the city and, unlike many other systems, provide a source for every statement. As a result of Aleph Alpha’s technology, a new type of interaction between citizens and public administration was created.

Aleph Alpha is working to make Luminous even more efficient and powerful. The latest version, Luminous-World, is will be Aleph Alpha’s most powerful AI language model to date with a total of 300 billion parameters enabling highly complex and critical use-cases. After the completion of the current testing phase, the release of Luminous-World is expected later this year. Parallel, Aleph Alpha is focusing on the further development of its technology in the areas of traceability and explainability: “Only with this focus we can ensure the sustainable and ethical development that meets our values and requirements – this is about more than just data protection.” (Jonas Andrulis, founder & CEO of Aleph Alpha)

Aleph Alpha is an AI research and application company based in Heidelberg. It researches, develops, and operationalises large AI models for text and image to ensure digital sovereignty for partners and customers from the public and private sectors. Two years after its founding, Aleph Alpha was awarded the German AI Prize 2021 as well as being named Baden-Württemberg’s AI Champion.

Find the full benchmark report here.

Press contact

Tim-André Thomas
PR & Communications Coordinator
tim-andre.thomas@aleph-alpha.com