MOSCOW, Nov 19 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on

Wednesday called for a national task force to coordinate

Russia's work on homegrown generative artificial intelligence

models, which he said were vital to preserving Russian

sovereignty.

Putin said large-language models have become a major

instrument in spreading information and are capable of

influencing the views of entire nations. He added that

dependency on LLMs designed in other countries was not

acceptable for Russia.

"For Russia, it is a matter of national, technological and

value-based sovereignty. Therefore, our country must possess a

comprehensive set of its own technologies and products in the

field of generative AI," Putin said at AI Journey, Russia's

flagship AI event.

Putin said the task force should focus on developing data

centres across the country and ensuring nearby energy sources

such as small-scale nuclear power stations.

While Russia lags the United States and China in AI, two

large-language models, Gigachat and Yandex GPT, have been

developed by the country's main AI-focused companies, Sberbank

and Yandex.

Sberbank, which grew from a traditional bank into a

technology company, announced a new version of Gigachat on

Wednesday and presented AI-powered products, from humanoid

robots to health-scanning ATMs, to Putin.

Putin said that AI-powered technologies' contributions to

Russia's gross domestic product should exceed 11 trillion

roubles ($136.57 billion) by 2030. He called for development of

a national AI implementation plan in addition to a task force

and urged state institutions and companies to make increasing

use of AI.

By blocking hardware imports including of microchips,

Western sanctions have been an obstacle to Russian efforts to

expand computing capacity and develop AI.

Putin warned against excessive regulation of AI but said

only Russian models should be used for national security and

intelligence gathering to ensure data does not leave the

country.

($1 = 80.5455 roubles)

(Writing by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)