President Vladimir Putin of Russia says he will soon approve a new version of the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in an effort to rival the West's "dangerous” monopoly in the sphere of controversial technology.
Addressing an AI conference in Moscow on Friday, Putin said that the West should not be allowed to develop a monopoly in the sphere of artificial intelligence.
He said some Western online search systems and generative models ignored or even canceled the Russian language and culture.
"The monopolistic domination of such foreign creations in Russia is unacceptable, dangerous and inadmissible," he said, urging his government to be "ahead of the curve."
Putin said he will soon sign a decree to approve “a new version of the national strategy for the development of artificial intelligence.”
The new strategy, according to the president, would make significant changes, including "expanding fundamental and applied research in the field of generative artificial intelligence and large language models.”
Putin has already ordered his government to pour funding into developing supercomputers and AI research.
Back in April, Russia's largest banking company Sber announced the launch of its own conversational artificial intelligence app called "Gigachat" but in test mode only.