Startup Mahakumbh: India Will Spearhead AI Transformation, Says PM

As artificial intelligence becomes the new buzzword in the technology startup sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India will have an upper hand in AI.

“Our job is to not let the opportunity go. If there are language constraints for the election campaign, I leverage AI to disseminate my message effectively in Tamil, Telugu and Odia,” said Modi, while speaking at Startup Mahakumbh on Wednesday (March 20).

In this era of people, seeking selfies with public figures, Nammo App has integrated AI to assist individuals present at the Startup Mahakumbh in capturing selfies with the Prime Minister. This solution underscores one of the use cases of AI, as emphasised by the Prime Minister.

“Artificial intelligence opens many avenues for young entrepreneurs and global investors. Initiatives like the National Quantum Mission, India AI Mission and Semiconductor Mission open gates of opportunities for the youth,” he further added.

Modi holds the view that India will spearhead the AI transformation and it’s imperative for the country’s tech ecosystem to ensure this outcome.

The government has been focusing on the AI sector for some time now, both on the deployment as well as the regulatory front.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) recently revised its earlier advisory to the largest social media companies in the country on the use of artificial intelligence, changing a provision that mandated intermediaries and platforms to get government approval before launching “under-tested” or “unreliable” AI models.

The IT ministry announced that the advisory issued on March 15 supersedes the previous one from March 1. The earlier requirement for platforms to seek “explicit permission” from the Centre before deploying “under-testing/unreliable” AI models has been removed from the new advisory.

Earlier this month, IIT-Madras’ research lab AI4Bharat unveiled IndicVoices, a comprehensive, open-source speech dataset spanning 22 Indian languages and 7,348 hours of audio. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also signed a multi-year agreement with IISc, Bengaluru to conduct joint research in the area of AI.

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