Pearl Chat 500M IT
Pearl Chat is an instruction-tuned causal language model developed by the AI for Uganda Initiative, focused on Luganda text generation.
Model details
- Architecture: PearlChatV2Model, a causal Transformer.
- Parameters: 466,682,112 total.
- Languages: Luganda and English.
- Framework: JAX and Flax NNX.
- Tokenizer: Custom Luganda BPE tokenizer.
- License: Apache 2.0.
Intended use
The model is intended for research and applications involving:
- Luganda conversational question answering.
- Luganda text generation and continuation.
- Luganda-English translation.
- African language NLP research.
Generated outputs may require human review, particularly for factual, technical, medical, legal, or other high-stakes applications.
Training data
The model was trained using the following datasets:
See the linked dataset cards for additional information about the data.
Evaluation
Evaluation results are provided in
benchmark_scorecard.json.
Results should be interpreted in the context of the evaluated tasks, datasets, metrics, and baselines. They do not establish performance across all Luganda use cases.
Limitations
Pearl Chat may produce inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading outputs. Its performance may vary across domains, dialects, and language varieties. It should not be used as the sole basis for high-stakes decisions.
The released weights use the project's native JAX/Flax NNX architecture. The Safetensors export does not, by itself, guarantee compatibility with standard Hugging Face Transformers loading APIs.
Artifacts
The repository includes:
model.safetensors: exported model weights.model_state/: native model state.config.json: model configuration.- Tokenizer files.
model_parameter_audit.json: parameter audit.benchmark_scorecard.json: evaluation results.
Citation
If you use Pearl Chat in research, please cite:
Kambale, W. (2026). Pearl Chat: A Native Luganda Conversational Language Model. AI for Uganda Initiative.
@misc{kambale2026pearlchat,
author = {Kambale, Wesley},
title = {Pearl Chat: A Native Luganda Conversational Language Model},
year = {2026},
publisher = {AI for Uganda Initiative},
url = {https://huggingface.co/ai4ug/pearl-chat-500m-it}
}
Project: AI for Uganda Initiative
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