Poland Builds Open Source AI Assistant in Mobile Citizen Application

In a landmark move for open source in the public sector, Poland is preparing to launch an AI assistant in its national digital wallet, mObywatel, by the end of 2025. The assistant will support citizens in handling administrative procedures using simple language. They will be able to seek information and guidance, bringing clarity but also facilitating those procedures for both citizens and administrations.

What sets this project apart is not just its functionality, but its foundation: the assistant is powered by PLLuM (Polish Large Language Model), an open source model funded and commissioned by the Ministry of Digital Affairs.  

Open Source Foundation for Sovereign AI 

Some of PLLuM's models are released under a fully open source licence, aiming to strengthen Poland’s digital sovereignty and reducing reliance on proprietary AI solutions and ensuring transparency, auditability, and long-term public benefit. 

In 2024, the work was carried out by a consortium comprising Wrocław University of Science and Technology, the Institute of Computer Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, NASK National Research Institute, the National Information Processing Institute and the University of Łódź. The goal of the project was to prepare the PLLuM language model, a prototype of a public administration assistant, and a dataset for further development of the PLLuM models. 

In 2025 development continues under the HIVE consortium, a working group of IT specialists, linguists, lawyers, sociologists, and cybersecurity experts focusing on advancing Polish language models. The project aims to conduct a pilot deployment in public administration, at the Ministry of Digital Affairs and in a selected public administration unit.  

At the same time, the team continues to develop the models and collect and optimise data, as Polish-language data and data tailored to the needs of public administration are key here. 

Currently, there are 26 variants freely available on Hugging Face, while a web-based chat version is also available, allowing everyone to experiment without local hardware.  

PLLuM’s code and model weights are gradually being published under research only or permissive open source commercial licences, allowing reuse, adaptation, and contribution by public administrations, academia, and developers across Europe. 

This marks a major step forward in demonstrating how publicly funded, open source AI can serve as a facilitator for modern government services. 

A Trusted AI Assistant Built for Citizens 

Once integrated into mObywatel, the AI assistant will allow citizens to ask administrative questions and receive accurate, user-friendly guidance. Other solutions based on PLLuM models will also support public officials in their daily work and the public administration in general with regards to digitalisation progress. The aim is to lower administrative barriers, reduce bureaucracy, and increase accessibility, especially for people with disabilities or limited digital literacy.  

Since late July, the mObywatel app has already counted ten million active users, which amounts to about one‑third of the adult population of Poland. Within the app citizens have activated ten million digital ID cards (mDowód), stored 5.5 million driving licences and uploaded 5.7 million vehicle documents, which serve 4.6 million registered vehicle owners. Daily traffic averages one million log‑ins. Aligned with Poland’s Digitalisation Strategy 2035, eighteen essential services have been added in the past eighteen months, including a digital disability card, electronic ID‑card applications, residence data access and case‑tracking. The newest interface arranges documents as cards in a virtual wallet, and a PLLuM‑powered chatbot is now in test use, with a public launch planned later this year. 

Crucially, all interactions will take place in Polish, using a model trained on legally compliant, ethically sourced data, with a strong emphasis on privacy and security and in line with European digital values. 

A Blueprint for Europe’s Public Sector AI? 

Poland’s AI assistant shows that open source AI can be both innovative and trustworthy, offering a sustainable alternative to closed, commercial models. By making the core model open source, Poland invites collaboration, scrutiny, and improvement, not only domestically, but across borders. 

With open source models like PLLuM, governments can build services that are sovereign, inclusive, and future-proof without compromising on performance or user experience. 

The upcoming launch of an AI assistant in mObywatel marks a turning point in digital government, not just for Poland, but for Europe. By choosing open source at the heart of its AI deployment, Poland is setting a precedent: public sector innovation can, and should, be built in the open. 

Edited 6 October 2025: Added detail that some models in the PLLuM family are released fully open source (Jaakko Karhu).