Infosys Has Trained 2.5 Lakh Employees On GenAI: Nandan Nilekani

Infosys cofounder and chairman Nandan Nilekani said that the IT major is working on 225 generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) programs for its clients. 

In his address to the shareholders at the company’s 43rd annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday (June 26), Nikelani also said that the IT juggernaut has so far trained more than 2.5 Lakh employees in GenAI technologies. 

“Infosys is one of the largest adopters of GitHub Copilot globally. Our employees have already generated over 3 Mn lines of code using generative AI large language models,” Nilekani added. 

The software company also said that it filed more than 46 AI patents and 70 AI client advocacies in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24). 

Noting that the GenAI “revolution” is still in its nascent stages, Nilekani said that enterprise AI will take several years to unfold, unlike consumer-focussed AI space. 

The Infosys chairman’s comments come at a time when GenAI mania has gripped the world. Ever since OpenAI debuted its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in late 2022, the emerging technology has seen rapid adoption. India too is racing to catch the bus. 

Be it the country’s first unicorn Krutrim or Sarvam AI, the homegrown GenAI landscape has made rapid strides in the past one year with the emergence of use cases in areas such as customer support, fintech, among others. 

As a result, investors are lining up to invest in startups leveraging the emerging technology. As per an Inc42 report, Indian GenAI startups raised more than $600 Mn between 2019 and 2023. Inc42 also estimates the homegrown GenAI market to cross the $17 Bn mark by 2030. 

Besides, the Centre has also earmarked INR 10,372 Cr for its India AI Mission. A recent Deloitte report said that India is at the top among 13 countries in the Asia Pacific region in terms of GenAI use and adoption.

Additionally, Infosys competitor Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) also unveiled a new platform recently to aggregate multiple GenAI services and LLM models under a single umbrella to enable businesses to adopt GenAI at scale. 

However, some issues still remain. There are issues about upskilling the country’s talent pool in the emerging technology and regulatory bottlenecks. The technology has also spawned issues such as misuse, deepfakes and misinformation. 

As a result, the government has been looking to crack the whip on the misuse of GenAI. Earlier this year, it issued an advisory that directed platforms to label undertrial AI models and ensure that no unlawful content is hosted on their sites. The move was met with criticism from industry stakeholders, including founders and industry bodies, following which the advisory was withdrawn. 

Many including SaaS unicorn Zoho cofounder and boss Sridhar Vembu have even termed GenAI catastrophic, saying that adopting new technologies without appropriate safeguards could cause unprecedented disruption of the existing social order and could lead to job losses.