Key facts
- Ukraine will prioritize AI systems that can be run on its own servers (on-premise).
- This policy aims to maintain control over digital tools for government, business, and military use.
- The decision was influenced by U.S. government actions restricting access to AI models.
- Ukraine is developing its own AI model based on Google's Gemma open-source variant.
- The new model is slated for release in autumn and will be used across sectors.
Ukraine intends to prioritize artificial intelligence systems that can be operated on its own servers, a move aimed at ensuring the country's digital tools for government, business, and military purposes are not subject to external control or potential shutdowns. This policy favors self-hosted, or "on-premise," models over solutions that remain under the provider's control, such as the main offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.
Roman Kyslyi, Chief AI Officer at Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, stated that this approach was reinforced after the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to restrict access to its powerful AI models. He emphasized that "AI sovereignty isn't just a defensive talking point, it's a necessity." Kyslyi clarified that the origin of the model is not the primary concern; rather, it is the ability to run it on Ukrainian infrastructure without restrictions.
Currently, Ukraine's AI assistant within the Diia government app utilizes Google's Gemini, accessed via servers in the European Union. Kyslyi described this as an "interim" solution, noting that personal data is stripped before queries are sent due to a lack of control over the model. Ukraine is actively developing its own AI model in collaboration with Kyivstar, based on Google's open-source variant, Gemma. This model is expected to be released in the autumn and is intended for deployment across government services, private enterprises, and the military. Kyslyi mentioned that Gemma and Mistral models were evaluated and found to perform comparably to remote-only alternatives on various tests.