The CEO of Ola, an Indian ride-hailing app that rivals Uber, announced this month a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup that aims to create an entire AI system for India from the ground up.
With the goal of making AI India-centric, this is a relatively new area for the nation.
During a live broadcast of the new AI company’s launch, Krutrim, the creator Bhavish Aggarwal, who is also the CEO and co-founder of Ola, stated that a huge number of the AI models in use today are steeped in Western culture and the English language.
It can comprehend and produce material in 10 of the 22 official languages of India, for which it was designed exclusively.
It states that Krutrim is intended for usage in a variety of contexts, including business communications and education.
The creation of the company coincides with the widespread use of AI throughout the world and with developments that have raised calls for and worries about AI regulation.
With the emergence of generative AI this year, which can produce fresh text, video, image, and audio content, there have been advances and controversy on a worldwide scale.
The most well-known instance of this is ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a chatbot that can generate text to suit users’ individual needs and engages in conversational interaction. It was developed by the AI research company OpenAI.
India might add $359 billion to $438 billion in the fiscal year between April 2029 and March 2030 if it fully utilizes generative AI technology, according to an EY analysis. This would represent a 5.9–7.2% rise in the country’s baseline gross domestic product.
Beyond utilizing AI, though, India, with its booming IT industry, has the chance to contribute to its development and design systems tailored to the nation of over 1.4 billion people, each with distinct and varied linguistic and cultural traits. Although Google and OpenAI do have databases in Indian languages, they mostly use English data.
That’s where businesses like Krutrim come into play.
India has been adopting AI, and in an attempt to capitalize on the trend, a variety of start-ups have formed in the nation offering AI solutions.
By creating their own large language model (LLM), or foundational model, businesses like Krutrim hope to go beyond this.
“Many businesses, big and small, are vying to accomplish that,” says Jaspreet Bindra, the creator of the consulting firm The Tech Whisperer.
One of the biggest providers of IT services globally, Tech Mahindra, is among the other Indian businesses working on LLM creation.
Tech Mahindra’s model, named Project Indus, is intended to be able to comprehend forty distinct Indian languages. There are numerous additional important languages in India besides the country’s 22 official languages.
Launch This month, CoRover.ai announced the introduction of BharatGPT, an Indian generative AI platform for which it has partnered with Google Cloud on a technological level.
Another Bengaluru-based startup, Sarvam AI, is also producing LLMs.
But according to Mr. Bindra, “it is not very easy to create an LLM of the scale, size and performance of a ChatGPT.”
He says that building a ground-up, full stack LLM can cost billions of dollars.
Finding the talent to build the technology is one of the other challenges.
For instance, computer scientists in Bengaluru and San Francisco created the software program Krutrim.
As the linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic backdrop of India is so diverse, “India-centric AI models are crucial,” according to Deepika Loganathan, co-founder and CEO of AI provider HaiVE. Tech.
“AI models are more effective and inclusive when they are tailored to India’s unique context.”
She notes that India’s efforts in this field are still in their infancy.
“More comprehensive work is required, even though some progress has been made in this area, particularly in language processing and localized applications,” claims Ms. Loganathan.
“Creating data sets that reflect India’s diversity and using AI to address local challenges” is one of the things included in this.
According to her, the primary obstacles are the lack of qualified AI specialists, infrastructure limitations, and data protection issues.
“More extensive regulatory frameworks are required to oversee the use of AI.”
Due to AI’s exponential advancement and expanding capabilities, India and other nations must decide how to regulate the technology while raising ethical questions, security concerns, and possible employment ramifications.
“A multifaceted approach” is necessary to address these issues, according to Ms. Loganathan. This would entail creating public-private partnerships, investing in infrastructure, improving AI education and training, and creating clear AI policies.
Industry insiders, however, are still upbeat about the potential advancements AI may see in India by 2024.
“We are likely to see significant advancements with growing government support, rising investment in AI research and development, and rising adoption of AI across industries,” asserts Ms. Loganathan.
“I hope to see increased cooperation between government, business, and academia to advance AI innovation and address both local and global issues.”
