India to develop its own AI foundational models: MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar

As generative artificial intelligence (AI) products like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini become ubiquitous, India will develop its own foundational models, minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said.

"We will be developing our own Indian foundational models. The world is talking about ChatGPT and OpenAI. Based on our own languages and our own India data sets, we expect that as a consequence of India's AI mission, we will have sovereign AI models that are designed and built in India," the minister said at a press briefing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

These models will serve India-centric use cases like health, medicine discovery, agriculture, education and governance, he added.


"There will be non-personal data collection platforms that will be available for Indian startups and companies, not for foreign companies," Chandrasekhar said, highlighting that data is currency for AI and related projects.

The government has set aside Rs 2,000 crore for startup financing in the field, similar to what is being done for semiconductor companies, he said.