MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia plans to integrate its homegrown Gigachat artificial intelligence model into IT systems on the International Space Station (ISS), the head of space agency Roscosmos said on Tuesday.
Gigachat, developed by the country’s largest bank, Sberbank, is one of Russia’s two flagship large language models (LLM) as it tries to catch up with the United States and China in the global AI race.
Roscosmos chief Dmitry Bakanov said that the next mission to the ISS this autumn will deliver everything needed for the model to function. Gigachat will assist the crew with processing satellite imagery, increasing the maximum resolution from one meter per pixel to 0.5 meters.
“This is a direct assistance for the cosmonauts,” Bakanov told a technology conference in Moscow.
In April, a Russian spacecraft delivered American astronaut Jonathan Kim and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky to the ISS. The next Russian spacecraft mission to the ISS is planned for November 27.
Russia has announced it will participate in the ISS until 2028 and plans to launch the first two modules of its own new space station in 2027.
Sberbank is focusing on developing AI agents – goal-directed generative AI systems designed to process information, make decisions and take actions without direct, constant human input.
(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya, writing by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
