Unveiling ELOQUENCE: Pioneering Conversational AI in Europe

What is the ELOQUENCE project?

Voice assistants and chatbots have become ubiquitous in various technological pipelines, both commercial and governmental. However, the complexity arises when these systems encounter unstructured dialogues. ELOQUENCE recognizes this challenge and sets out to comprehend and translate these unstructured dialogues into explainable, safe, knowledge-grounded, trustworthy, and bias-controlled language models.

Starting in January 2024, ELOQUENCE (101135916) is a Horizon RIA project focused on the research and development of innovative technologies for collaborative voice and chatbots. With a rich consortium including 16 partners, the project aims to push the boundaries of AI-driven dialogue engines to new frontiers

The key objective of ELOQUENCE is ambitious yet crucial - to develop a technology capable of autonomous learning, efficiently supporting most European languages while adhering to sustainable computational practices. Moreover, the project is driven by the vision to uphold European values and cater to safety-critical applications by incorporating humans-in-the-loop.

Kick-off of ELOQUENCE in Madrid, Spain

The launch of Project ELOQUENCE took place on January 11th and 12th, 2024, in the vibrant city of Madrid, Spain. Representatives of 16 partners, including SMEs, academia, and industry were present in order to discuss the project. Special emphasis was made on the coordination of the project.

During the two-day event, attendees engaged in intensive brainstorming, planning, and discussion on various aspects of the project, including the roadmap and key milestones. With a focus on multilingual and multimodal environments, ELOQUENCE aims to demonstrate its capabilities through several pilot projects, including safety-critical scenarios and smart home assistants.

The kick-off meeting was also an opportunity for Privanova to explain its tasks in regard to the Data Management Plan, Ethics compliance, Standardisation Recommendations and establishment of the community of experts, and the expected efforts from partners in this sense. 

Privanova’s role in ELOQUENCE 

Drawing on Privanova’s knowledge and experience in ensuring ethics compliance and data management, our role in ELOQUENCE will coverT8.4 Ethics Compliance Management and Ethics Advisory Board and  T8.5 at the occasion of which Privanova will appoint an Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) composed of three external advisors and a Chair to the EAB. The EAB will be tasked with the overall support of the consortium, which entails reviewing of deliverables and monitoring the project's progress via regular meetings.

Privanova will also lead T8.5 « Data Protection Compliance and Data Management» through which it will establish the Data Management Plan based on the input of partners. The DMP will give an overview of the usage of the data throughout the lifespan of the project. The DMP will give insights regarding the application of FAIR Data principles; Personal Data Processing as well as risks related to the processing of personal data.

Additionally, Privanova will also be leading T7.4 «Standardisation Recommendations » under which contact and collaboration with standards-developing organisations (SDOs) will be maintained for linking the technical work, ethics, privacy, and interoperability of the project to standards. Finally, Privanova is also playing a key role in T6.4 «Stakeholder Engagement and Community of Experts» through which the consortium will be establishing the ELOQUENCE Community of Experts comprising a representative cross-section of all relevant groups of stakeholders. This community will be supporting our research activities and business use case(s) validation.