- Major SE Asian companies are piloting SEA-Lion.
- Early uses include translating e-commerce content and legal materials into local languages.
- As AI Singapore’s Leslie Teo says, “The culture is different, the way we speak is very different.”
Major regional companies like Indonesian e-commerce firm Tokopedia and Singaporean IT services provider NCS are piloting a new AI large language model tailored for Southeast Asia.
Can SEA-Lion reflect regional diversity?
Dubbed SEA-Lion, the model aims to understand better and generate conversational output reflecting the region’s diversity of languages and cultures. Early applications range from e-commerce and legal to IT and customer service functions.
How does SEA-Lion transform localizations?
For instance, Tokopedia is utilizing SEA-Lion to translate product descriptions into different Southeast Asian tongues. Meanwhile, NCS is leveraging it to render legal compliance materials into Bahasa Indonesia and Thai – saving the trouble of using English-based models.
The pilot signifies growing efforts to develop AI capabilities customized for the ASEAN region versus Western cultures. As AI Singapore senior director Leslie Teo commented, “The culture is different, the way we speak is very different.” SEA-Lion offers a testbed for that approach.
