AI democratisation to face challenge from enterprises who want proprietary info private: Adobe CEO

The growing global push to democratize artificial resources (AI) will face an inevitable challenge from commercial enterprises who want to keep information proprietary, Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of software major Adobe Systems said on Wednesday. In a conversation with Bharti Enterprises founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal at the ongoing IndiaAI Impact Summit here, Narayen said it'll require companies and enterprises to behave differently and recognize what is their sustainable advantage.

"Companies have to behave differently and recognize what their sustainable advantage is. It can't over time be just the model. It has to be the use cases - what people are doing with the models," Narayen said, adding that Adobe's move to adopt open standards has led to the global embracing of the Portable Document Format (PDF) file format. Developed by the company and made free of charge in 1993, PDF is used to present documents.

Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to globally develop AI on open standards earlier in the day, Mittal said many across India and European economies support making open standards, and keeping AI open to the world, as opposed to caging it in the hands of a few. Narayen said the PM was absolutely correct in reflecting that it would be an ongoing challenge to ensure AI resources are used to advance the good for humanity.


Narayen said Adobe is also passionate about content authenticity, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for the need to authenticity labels on AI generated content. "In one of my meetings with him (Modi), his eyes really lit up when he said I want every piece of information that's produced to have the provenance and the watermark so that people can actually know what is real and what's fake," Narayen said.

Poised to grow

Narayen pointed out the number of people who use AI in India will be greater than anywhere in the world, over a few years. "The leadership India can play not just in what these models mean, but also how you think about data, how you think about privacy and security and trust," he said.

Mittal said AI is becoming a really integral part of how Airtel operates, serves its customers, builds and manages its networks.

The telecom leader stressed that AI will help flourish healthcare, education, deep research, and medical sciences. Meanwhile, Narayen, who is the lead independent director on the board of directors at pharma giant Pfizer, said that AI will unlock the opportunities for personalized medicine. "The fact that every student in India can have access to any of the world's information on their device," he remarked.