Upeo Labs, a Kenyan generative AI startup, is making waves in the education sector with its innovative use of Meta's Llama models to address local challenges. The company's flagship product, Somo-GPT is assisting high school education across Kenya.
Powered by Llama 3 and Llama 3.1, Somo-GPT functions as a multi-subject teaching assistant, offering support in areas ranging from menstrual health to physics. The AI-driven tool is currently being used in a closed beta at 500 high schools nationwide, supporting Kenya's national curriculum digitisation efforts.
Roy Murwa Khasiani, founder and CEO of Upeo Labs, emphasised the scalability of their solution. "Somo-GPT is scalable, since every African country has a nationally approved high school curriculum that could benefit," he stated.
Upeo Labs utilised advanced prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and extensive data engineering to fine-tune the Llama models for their specific use case. The startup also adhered to Meta's responsible AI guidelines in developing their product.
Khasiani credits the open-source community, particularly Meta, for making their efforts possible. "There is no Upeo Labs without the efforts of the open source community," he acknowledged. "We believe access to generative AI is a human right of the near future, if not the present already."
The success of Somo-GPT demonstrates the potential for open-source AI models like Llama to drive innovation in developing economies. As Khasiani puts it, "Now—more than ever—economies can introduce digital transformation to entire sectors using open models."