New AI platform launches as Ja prepares public debate on AI rules

A Jamaican-developed artificial intelligence (AI) platform has entered the market just weeks before the National Artificial Intelligence Task Force launches public consultations on Jamaica’s first AI policy framework.

OpenJM, an agentic AI platform developed by Crimson Tide AI Limited, was built partly in response to concerns that Jamaican businesses and consumers are increasingly relying on foreign AI systems that process and store information outside the country, founder Anu El told the Financial Gleaner.

“A lot of Jamaica’s data is going overseas,” El said.

The platform is built on publicly available AI technology that has been modified and customised initially for Jamaican users and eventually, the wider Caribbean market, El said. The project, which he said required about US$2.5 million in investment from founders and private investors, grew out of Crimson Tide AI’s earlier work in computer vision and AI monitoring systems.

OpenJM is intended to function as more than a chatbot, according to El. Users can store information, personalise interactions, and access tools designed to improve the reliability of responses and reduce hallucinations commonly associated with large language models.

El said many Jamaican businesses may not know where information entered into foreign AI systems is ultimately processed or stored. Even so, he acknowledged that local control alone does not solve another challenge facing Jamaica’s AI ambitions: access to high-quality local data.

“Whatever Google finds is what OpenJM will find,” he said.

Local AI systems will need businesses, institutions, and individuals to contribute and manage datasets they control, allowing information to be updated, managed, and removed when necessary, El said.

Consultations to begin by September

OpenJM’s launch comes as official reports show that the AI sector is growing faster than the Government’s ability to measure, regulate, and build the datasets needed to support it.

National AI Task Force Chairman Christopher Reckord said the next stage of the policy process will begin by September 11 with the launch of a consultation website designed to gather public feedback before a national framework is finalised.

Two reports released over the past 18 months have highlighted both the opportunities and gaps in Jamaica’s AI development: the National AI Task Force recommendations and UNESCO’s Jamaica Artificial Intelligence Readiness Assessment.

UNESCO found that despite growing AI activity across government, education, healthcare, Customs, and immigration, Jamaica still lacks a standalone AI law, AI-specific procurement rules, and a dedicated AI regulator. The assessment also found that the country has no official estimate of AI’s contribution to the economy, no registry of AI companies, and limited national statistics tracking AI employment, investment, and adoption.

Earlier this year, Science and Technology Minister Dr Andrew Wheatley warned that government entities had already begun experimenting with AI tools before formal safeguards were in place and directed the task force to develop recommendations on AI literacy, privacy, cybersecurity, data governance, data sovereignty, and human oversight within the public service.

The task force’s recommendations seek to address many of those gaps through a national AI framework, stronger data-governance systems, expanded AI education and public-awareness programmes, improved infrastructure, and eventual AI-specific regulatory arrangements.

The reports also point to limited local research capacity. UNESCO found that Jamaica produced just 13 AI-related publications between 2019 and 2024, identified no AI patents, and spends about 0.06 per cent of GDP on research and development, equivalent to roughly US$13.6 million annually based on current GDP estimates.

Debate shifts to data

For Matthew Stone, president of the Jamaica Artificial Intelligence Association, the reports identify the same problem local developers are now confronting. Discussions within the sector are increasingly focused on what AI sovereignty – keeping control of Jamaican data, AI infrastructure, and decision-making within local governance frameworks – should mean in practice, he said.

The association, which Stone said has been active since 2021 and was formally registered in 2023, now has more than 200 members and representation on the National AI Task Force. He pointed to growing activity among developers building AI solutions for tourism, finance, disaster response and public services, as well as regional competitions and hackathons focused on AI.

Stone said conversations about sovereignty often focus on AI models and computing infrastructure while overlooking what he considers the more fundamental issue: data.

The concern echoes findings in the task force report, which identified dependence on foreign technology providers as a weakness and warned that reliance on external AI systems could expose Jamaica to economic vulnerabilities, privacy risks, and limits on local customisation.

Stone pointed to initiatives such as Project IRIS, which examines how well existing AI systems understand Jamaican culture, language, and values, and CaribVoices, which focuses on creating Caribbean speech datasets that can be used to train AI systems.

“It’s not just about speaking patois. It’s about how does it align with our values and customs,” Stone said.

Jamaica’s long-term AI ambitions are more likely to be achieved through adapting publicly available AI technologies than by attempting to build large language models from scratch, he said.

“There are many discussions around AI sovereignty. We can utilise open-source AI technology and then build applications on top of that,” Stone said.

He added that policy can establish direction, but implementation will ultimately depend on ministries, agencies, and institutions building the data systems needed to support local AI development.

Emphasis on jobs

A July report by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union’s AI Task Force, where Reckord served as vice-chairman, notes that Jamaica’s global-services sector contains substantial concentrations of customer-service, administrative and transaction-processing work, and identifies those routine, codifiable functions as among the activities most susceptible to transformation by generative AI. The report also emphasises that much of the expected impact is likely to involve job transformation and augmentation rather than full automation.

Reckord said discussions about AI often place too much emphasis on job losses. He noted that the policy would not dictate what a business chooses to do to increase productivity and efficiencies.

“Historically, whenever there is a new technology, there is always talk that the sky is falling,” Reckord said, adding that artificial intelligence itself has existed in various forms since the 1950s.

He cited an example of a company that typically employed 600 workers but could not fill 150 open positions. After reviewing its needs, management determined that only a small number of roles involved routine phone-answering functions. Those tasks were automated after the company struggled to recruit workers to fill them.

Stone said AI safety and cybersecurity issues are also becoming part of local policy discussions as governments and businesses, internationally, confront growing risks from AI-assisted cyberattacks, and, increasingly, autonomous AI systems.

Reckord noted that developing advanced language models and the infrastructure needed to support them, including data centres, would require substantial investment, making partnerships and collaboration important considerations for small states.

Stone, however, argued that infrastructure alone would not create a local AI ecosystem.

“If you don’t tackle the data piece first, how can we process it?” he said.

carolyn.guniss@rjrgleaner.com