Hyderabad: Agritech company Cropin Technology has launched the sector's first open-sourced micro-language model for climate-smart agriculture, targeting the underserved farmers in the Global South.
Aksara is an open-source microlanguage model launched by Bengaluru-based agri-tech firm, Cropin Technology. Aksara promises to enable farmers with the right kind of information, hyper-tuned to local conditions and crops so that they can make climate-smart decisions.
The existing large language model, which served as the base model for Aksara, is fed with more generic data, which are biased towards the Global North, said Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of Cropin.
"In an era where Large Language Models are reshaping jobs, businesses, and customer interactions, the spotlight is now on industry-specific models trained on niche and comprehensive domain data as the 'next big thing.' These models can potentially transform agriculture, paving the way for a new era of tech-driven farming in a sector that has traditionally seen limited technological advancement," Kumar said.
"Domain-specific AI models for agriculture are expected to attract significant investments, offering a practical and economically viable approach to food systems transformation. Akṣara reinstates our commitment to leading the tech-driven agricultural movement in the years ahead, significantly impacting small-scale farmers' lives," Kumar added.
The first version of 'akṣara' will cover nine crops -- paddy, wheat, maize, sorghum, barley, cotton, sugarcane, soybean, and millets for five countries in the Indian subcontinent.
"AI has the potential to transform agriculture, but challenges like access to large-scale structured data, expertise, and storage/compute infrastructure limit its adoption. Open-source projects like Aksara are crucial for wider AI use and speeding up innovation," said Praveen Pankajakshan, head of Cropin AI Labs.
Cropin said it aims to bridge this gap with 'akṣara' by harnessing the power of GenAI to provide insights into modern farming practices, accurate information, and farm advisories. The open-source initiative aims to support agronomists, agri-scientists, field staff, and extension workers and gradually extend the services to farmers in multiple languages, the company added.
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