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Natural Language Understanding

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) will be key for making the most of AI and enables tasks as wide ranging as using voice assistants at home to a reliable automatization of certain social services. To accelerate innovation, development of applications, and implementation in this area, NLU therefore constitutes one of AI Sweden’s strategic initiatives.

Do you want access to GPT-SW3?

AI Sweden together with RISE and WASP WARA Media & Language have built the first truly large-scale generative language model for the Nordic languages, primarily Swedish.

Learn more:

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AI Sweden now releases the first large Nordic language model, GPT-SW3. It is available as an open...

What is Natural Language Understanding?

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is a collective term for the applied aspects of how computer programs or electronic devices can analyze, produce, modify or respond to human text and speech. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a core element of this area. NLP algorithms (language models) learn from language data. They enable machine understanding and machine representation of natural (human) language. Using NLP, applications and tools can be used to identify patterns and provide insights hidden in large amounts of language data, too vast for humans to process. Based on patterns and insights, unstructured data can be turned into actionable information, allowing us to make data-driven and well-informed decisions. 

In order for Sweden to benefit from the rapid development in the applied language technology area, language models need to be trained on datasets for Swedish and minority languages spoken in Sweden.

Ongoing projects

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A shared digital assistant for the public sector

This is a collaboration between Swedish authorities, municipalities, regions, and industry, coordinated by AI Sweden. The objective is to promote national cooperation on AI for text tasks and create...
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DeployAI

The project DeployAI will build, deploy, and launch a fully operational AI-on-demand platform (AIoDP) promoting trustworthy, ethical, and transparent European AI solutions for use in the industry...
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EuroLingua-GPT

AI Sweden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems are together training a new series of large language models (LLMs) for all of the official European languages.
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FormAI

FormAI explores the use of generative AI coupled with formal verification for developing secure and trustworthy software in the automotive domain.
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Multimodal language model

AI Sweden's language team is taking the next major step by initiating the development of Sweden's first large multimodal language model. The new model is expected, just like GPT-SW3, to become an...
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Next generation infrastructure

Within the Next generation infrastructure project, AI Sweden is developing next-generation infrastructure for the training, deployment, and iterative improvement of foundation models by addressing...
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TrustLLM

TrustLLM will develop European large language models (LLMs) on an unprecedented scale, trained on the largest amount of text so far in European AI, covering a range of underrepresented languages, and...

Past projects

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Data Readiness Lab

The Data Readiness Lab provides a collaborative environment and contributes skills, tools, frameworks and resources to increase data readiness and data maturity among actors in both the public and...
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GPT-SW3

AI Sweden, together with RISE and WASP WARA Media & Language, have developed a large-scale generative language model for the Nordic languages, primarily Swedish.
GPT-SW3 graphic showing input by public sector, industry, startups and academia

GPT-SW3 validation project

Can a large-scale Swedish generative language model reduce the threshold for using advanced language models to solve text processing tasks across a variety of sectors and use cases?

Interdisciplinary expert pool for NLU

This project aims to establish and test a new form of cross-disciplinary collaboration for accelerating applied AI in the context of AI-driven language technology: The Interdisciplinary Expert Pool...
Language Models for Swedish Authorities project

Language Models for Swedish Authorities

The project develops large-scale language models for the Swedish public sector, enabling a number of applications with specific relevance to Swedish authorities.
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SuperLim

The SuperLim project forms a Swedish version of the English benchmarking platform (Super)GLUE. The first version of an evaluation framework for Swedish language models has now been released with a set...
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Swedish Language Data Lab

A thoroughly developed base for Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the cornerstones of successful AI applications. NLP is one of AI Sweden's strategic areas, and the Swedish Language Data Lab...
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Swedish Medical Language Data Lab

An extensive amount of medical text data is produced in Swedish healthcare, dental care, and the life sciences sector. The Swedish Medical Language Data Lab aims to develop language models for the...

Meet the team

A picture of Magnus Sahlgren

Magnus Sahlgren

Head of Research, NLU
+46 (0)76-315 34 80
A picture of Björn Hovstadius

Björn Hovstadius

Manager AI Labs
+46 (0)70-838 39 47
Photo of Amelia Högberg

Amelia Högberg

Project administrator & Event manager NLU team
+46 (0)70-431 92 38
A picture of Danila Petrelli

Danila Petrelli

Senior Data Manager
A picture of Felix Stollenwerk

Felix Stollenwerk

Senior Research Scientist, PhD
+46 (0)70 697 47 14
A picture of Amaru Cuba Gyllensten

Amaru Cuba Gyllensten

Senior Research Scientist, PhD
A picture of Ariel Ekgren

Ariel Ekgren

Senior Research Scientist
+46 (0)70-793 13 94
A Picture of Tim Isbister

Tim Isbister

AI Engineer
Niclas Hertzberg

Niclas Hertzberg

AI Engineer
A portrait picture of Liv Kåreborn

Liv Kåreborn

AI Developer

Insights from behind the scenes of AI

The AI Sweden NLU team’s aim with writing blog posts is to be as open and transparent as possible with the development process, and to invite several different perspectives on this type of model — both our own as well as those who may be more critical of this development.

NLP Seminar Series

The NLP Seminar Series was a bi-weekly forum for people who work with or are interested in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and language technologies. While we don't have any upcoming seminars planned, you can head over to our YouTube channel to watch the recordings.

The seminars were organized by RISE NLP group and AI Sweden.

For more information, contact

If you are interested in becoming a partner of AI Sweden, and getting access to the partner benefits, including the Labs, please feel free to reach out.

A picture of Magnus Sahlgren
Magnus Sahlgren
Head of Research, NLU
+46 (0)76-315 34 80
Photo of Amelia Högberg
Amelia Högberg
Project administrator & Event manager NLU team
+46 (0)70-431 92 38