Free and publicly available artificial intelligence: the Slovenian approach that fails to convince experts

BarcelonaIt's the great revolution of the century. Artificial intelligence has transformed industry, finance, healthcare, and the lives of citizens. In just over three years, users have become accustomed to the technological feats of ChatGPT and other AI processors that outsource everyday tasks and decisions that previously required more time and effort. And everything points to us only being at the beginning

But there's an important detail: This revolution is primarily in the hands of private companies.Many of these services offer features only accessible through paid subscriptions. Thus, the most advanced services remain out of reach for a large segment of the population, a disparity that could hinder universal access to a technology that is becoming essential for the functioning of society. In response to this rapid growth, Slovenia aims to set a precedent and become the first country in the world to create a national generative AI platform with free access for all citizens. The goal is to ensure that all individuals, businesses, universities, and institutions in the country can utilize cutting-edge tools without relying on large corporations. The strategy, presented by the Prime Minister, the liberal Robert GolobBy mid-November, Slovenia aims to guarantee free access to generative AI—the kind that creates new content, text, sounds, and images—for all Slovenians and ensure "that data cannot be managed by multinationals, but only by the users themselves," explained the government. The executive assures that processing and storage will be located within the European Union and that users will retain control over their data, something that, in theory, should strengthen citizens' privacy compared to commercial models trained on aggregated data. All of this will be done in Slovenian, in a commitment to developing more content in this language spoken by two million people. The platform, which should become operational during the first half of 2026 according to the government's announced timeline, will have an annual investment of 10 million euros. The first bidding phase for companies wishing to participate closes this Thursday.

But if users already have access to free versions of commercial tools like ChatGPT or DeepSeek, what's the point of allocating resources to a proprietary platform? Jozef Stefan, an artificial intelligence expert at the Slovenian institute, explained it on national radio with the following metaphor: "The difference is as big as showing up to a race with an average city car instead of a top-of-the-line racing car. If we want to compete, we need the best equipment," he stated.

While the government hasn't gone into detail about the specifics of the initiative, it's clear from the tender that the ultimate goal isn't to develop a proprietary generative AI model from scratch, but rather to create a platform through agreements with providers and, in parallel, consolidate infrastructure to develop and deploy proprietary models.

Less digital sovereignty

There is much controversy surrounding how to implement this formula. A state agreement with major providers like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Anthropic Claude would effectively guarantee free access to cutting-edge technology. But, paradoxically, it would distance Slovenia from digital sovereignty, making it more beholden to the interests and national agendas of large corporations. This is the concern raised by dozens of experts and organizations from various fields who have sent an open letter to the Prime Minister expressing their worries. They believe this initiative "endangers security and runs counter to national and European strategic guidelines." One of the letter's demands is that the resources allocated to the new platform should be used to develop a "public and open-source" national AI. But what is generating the most concern are the doubts about user security and the protection of personal data. In a country where 88% of children aged 12 to 15 and 92% of secondary school students use this technology, concerns are being raised about how the privacy of the data will be guaranteed and how it will be prevented from being made available to third parties for training commercial models, as the prime minister has assured.

The initiative, which has been received as an electioneering ploy due to its lack of specifics, has also disappointed a segment of the country's technology sector, which assumes the contract will be awarded to an American company. "What the country's sector hasn't understood is why large American tech companies have been favored over European ones, or why the focus isn't simply on supporting AI development here: we have great scientists and academic achievements in this field," Blaz Abe, an economics journalist for the Slovenian newspaper ARA, told the newspaper. Finance Business News DailyAbe argues that, if implemented correctly, it could be an interesting and replicable initiative on a European scale, but he remains cautious: "It's difficult to commit to anything based on the information that has been published so far."