 |
SINGAPORE, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — At the recent ATxSummit, the apex event of Asia Tech x Singapore (ATxSG) 2025, organised by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA), key global and regional efforts around AI, LLM models, AI adoption for enterpise and upskilling for talent were announced.
Building a trusted AI ecosystem is a key focus for Singapore, as maximal adoption and innovation can happen, leading to greater productivity and societal benefits. Singapore has been influencing global norms for AI through:
Advancing AI science locally and globally
“The Singapore Consensus on Global AI Safety Research Priorities”, The Singapore Consensus, was presented at the Ministerial Roundtable to bridge research and policies on AI safety. This anchors on science-based evidence to identify priorities to build trusted, reliable and secure AI and translates research into policies to ensure responsible development and use of AI.
IMDA has been working with global partners to develop practical and implementable frameworks e.g. IMDA’s enhanced AI Verify Testing Framework now addresses GenAI risks and aligns with US NIST standards, streamlining AI governance across both markets.
Singapore and US will spearhead the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR) Certification for businesses to facilitate trusted cross border data flows. This provides businesses with access to 9 economies with about 40 trillion in market size.
Providing practical testing guidance and tools with AI Verify Foundation
Globally, there is a growing need to test and prototype AI in real-world setting and the Global AI Assurance Pilot has brought together expert testers and companies from around the world to work through use cases. The pilot gained strong local and international interest. 16 specialist AI testers were paired with 17 GenAI deployers from 10 different industries. The valuable insights will influence global norms for AI.
Announced on 29 May, IMDA develops first-of-its-kind Testing Starter Kit for Gen AI Applications, offering practical testing guidance for businesses developing or using GenAI apps. Open-sourcing practical testing toolkits such as the Testing Starter Kit help companies test the performance and reliability of AI models in their business context.
Catalysing innovation to real-world deployment
The regional-language LLMs developed through the National Multimodal Large Language Model Programme supported by IMDA includes the text-based SEA-LION LLM, and the multimodal MERaLiON LLM.
Announced on 28 May, MERaLiON (Multimodal Empathetic Reasoning and Learning in One Network) developed by A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R) is Southeast Asia (SEA)’s empathetic Multimodal LLM, designed to understand the region’s diverse languages, cultures, and communication styles. MERaLiON’s first version garnered over 90,000 downloads globally since its release in Dec 2024, attracting users from corporate research labs, media service providers, startups, and academics.
MERaLiON Version 2 features upgrades like wider coverage of Southeast Asian languages, code-switching capabilities, being emotionally intelligent and paralinguistic understanding. These improvements pave the way for more intuitive and culturally aware AI apps in SEA. This would help businesses build products and services in SEA that are catered for cultural nuances to enhance their service and engagement with customers. Through such projects, Singapore and SEA can retain a distinct voice and identity in this digital age.
A*STAR I2R and IMDA launched the new MERaLiON Consortium to harness expertise in the ecosystem, and forge partnership among organisations, end users, R&D, technology players to accelerate learning and adoption to develop practical AI apps (e.g. from multilingual customer support to health and emotional insight detection and agentic decision-making systems).
For critical fields like healthcare – SingHealth, the largest healthcare group in Singapore, announced that Enigma, Singapore’s agentic healthcare AI, co-developed by clinicians and AI scientists, signed Memorandum of Understandings with Roche and ST Engineering to expand the reach and use of Enigma.
Frontier tech is making headway and Singapore is working with enterprises and talent to level up
IMDA is working with enterprises to turbocharge their adoption of tech through initiatives tailored to their levels of digital maturity. By embracing digital, businesses can cut costs, enhance productivity, venture new product lines and markets.
Last year, Singapore launched the Digital Enterprise Blueprint (DEB), a roadmap to help SMEs stay ahead of the curve by incorporating tech like AI, Cloud, Cyber Resilience into their operations.
On 27 May, Singapore announced three new partnerships with Alibaba Cloud, Prudential Singapore, and ST Engineering Info under DEB to uplift the digital capabilities like AI, cloud technologies and cyber resilience.
IMDA is enhancing its partnership with tech giants like AWS and Microsoft via the GenAI x Digital Leaders Programme to turbo-charge access to tech expertise/resources, advisory on projects, business impact and implementation support for digitally mature SMEs.
In tandem, Singapore is meeting the growing demand for talent by training and reskilling tech talent.
IMDA secured 400 job and training opportunities under TechSkills Accelerator where locals can take on AI Practitioner roles with leading companies such as AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and SingTel.
Announced on 27 May, IMDA is expanding the effort and partnering AI Singapore and leading companies to provide another 400 more AI Practitioner job and training opportunities for locals. These 800 new training opportunities aim to accelerate the pipeline of AI practitioners and enable locals to take on higher-value work in frontier companies.
CONTACT: atxsg.imda@archetype.co
