On July 7, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place at the Palexpo conference center in Geneva, Switzerland. The awards ceremony was also held there. Jānis Ziediņš, who works at the Culture Information Systems Centre, received the award for Hugo.lv. It is a Latvian state platform that helps with language technologies. The platform was created with the help of the European Union, in cooperation with the Culture Information Systems Centre and the company Tilde.
Hugo.lv is a website used by Latvian government institutions. It helps with language technologies. Hugo.lv offers e-services that use artificial intelligence. People in Latvia can use this website to translate texts into 24 European languages. The website helps recognize and create speech. There is also a tool that helps write correctly in Latgalian. Hugo.lv offers easy-to-understand language and virtual assistants to government institutions.
Hugo.lv won the WSIS Champion Award for a project related to cultural and linguistic diversity. Initially, 20 best projects from around the world were selected, and 5 received the award. WSIS says that these projects were good and people voted for them online. Champions show how technology can be used to help society. They are good examples at the local and global level. The projects were evaluated for their leadership and innovation in helping to develop through the use of technology.
Jānis Ziediņš from CISC says that Hugo.lv is an important part of Latvia's digital transformation. It is used by state employees and citizens. Hugo.lv helps with translation and speech technologies, and it supports the Latvian language in the digital age. Winning the award means that we have to work further. We want Hugo.lv to be an open platform for language technologies that help the country and people. We continue to improve translation and speech technologies. Together with partners, we plan to create a large model of the Latvian language.
Tilde CEO Artūrs Vasiļevskis says: "We at Tilde are happy that the Hugo.lv platform and the language technologies it contains have been appreciated not only in Latvia, but also in other countries. The WSIS Champion Award shows that our technologies, which use artificial intelligence and help develop the Latvian language, are competitive worldwide. We want to create language technologies that are useful to everyone - government, businesses and people. That is why openness and cooperation are important to us. Now Tilde is working on a large language model for European languages, which will be suitable for the Baltic languages, but will also help the Ukrainian and Turkish languages. It will be a secure solution that can be used for various purposes. This model will strengthen the place of our language in the digital world, provide access to good language technologies and provide opportunities for future innovations."
The WSIS Prize is designed to recognize and highlight projects and activities that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for societal development. The WSIS Prize attracts many participants from around the world. The United Nations (UN) says the WSIS Prize is a unique platform. It highlights success stories of using ICTs for sustainable development.