KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim launched Malaysia’s home-grown multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) model, ‘ILMU’, during the inaugural Asean AI Malaysia Summit 2025 at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Mitec) today.

ILMU is Malaysia’s own multimodal large language model (LLM), trained on local language and data to understand our culture, context and daily realities.

Fully developed, owned and operated in Malaysia, it is built by YTL AI Labs, in partnership with Universiti Malaya (UM).

ILMU keeps data local and gives the nation strategic control over its AI future, ensuring we lead with intelligence rooted in our own values and voice.

The name ILMU stands for Intelek Luhur Malaysia Untukmu, reflecting the model’s core values of ‘Intelek’, for context-aware intelligence; ‘Luhur’, for ethical foundations rooted in Malaysian values; ‘Malaysia’, for cultural and linguistic fluency; and ‘Untukmu’, because it is built to serve all Malaysians.