KUALA LUMPUR — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today unveiled its first home-grown multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) model, ‘Ilmu’, at the inaugural Asean AI Malaysia Summit 2025 held at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Mitec).
Developed entirely within the country, Ilmu is a large language model (LLM) trained on local data and languages to reflect Malaysia’s cultural nuances and everyday realities, Bernama reported.
The project is spearheaded by YTL AI Labs in collaboration with Universiti Malaya (UM).
Designed to retain data sovereignty, Ilmu offers Malaysia strategic autonomy in shaping its AI trajectory—anchored in national values and linguistic identity.
The acronym ILMU stands for Intelek Luhur Malaysia Untukmu, encapsulating its guiding principles: ‘Intelek’ for context-aware intelligence; ‘Luhur’ for ethical grounding in Malaysian values; ‘Malaysia’ for cultural and linguistic fluency; and ‘Untukmu’, signifying its purpose to serve all Malaysians.
Also present at the launch were Asean Secretary-General Dr Kao Kim Hourn and Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo were also in attendance.
In a statement, Gobind hailed ILMU as a landmark achievement that aligns with Malaysia’s vision for a tech-driven, inclusive future.
YTL Power International Bhd managing director Datuk Seri Yeoh Seok Hong described ILMU as a testament to the company’s commitment to innovation rooted in Malaysia’s rich cultural and intellectual legacy.
According to YTL AI Labs, ILMU matches the performance of leading global models such as GPT-4o and Llama 3.1.
It also topped the Bahasa Melayu language understanding benchmark (MalayMMLU), demonstrating superior results in handling real-world prompts.
The consumer-facing chatbot, ILMUchat, will be available for early access beginning Malaysia Day, 16 September 2025. Interested users may register at ilmu.ai. — August 12, 2025