The World Economic Forum in an article in 2018, had asked if India had missed the bus regarding adoption of AI. It wrote: “It is no secret that India missed reaping the benefits of the first, second and third industrial revolutions. If it is to embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution equitably, inclusively and sustainably, taking a leadership position on AI is critical. In order to achieve the goals of “AI for All”, India must address certain barriers and bottlenecks, such as the availability of broad-based research expertise, the absence of an enabling data ecosystem, low awareness around AI adoption, issues of privacy and lack of stakeholder collaboration.” Since then, India has taken rapid strides in realising, and actually promoting the use of AI in government and society in general. There are, of course, two sides to India’s experience with AI. One is the legal issue concerning actor Anil Kapoor and his famous phrase “jhaakas” in his film Yudh. Deepfake videos showing him, or his AI-generated likeness, uttering the iconic phrase forced him to go to court, where, in a landmark judgment, the Delhi High Court not only protected his “personality rights” but also acknowledged “misuse of artificial intelligence tools” to create deepfake videos. More recently, we had a deepfake videos of actors Aamir Khan and Ranveer Singh that went viral during election season with both reportedly asking their followers to vote for the Congress party. Both filed complaints, saying the videos were morphed. So too was another video of Home Minister Amit Shah making some controversial comments on another viral video, which was also morphed using AI. The latest to join that targeted group is actor Jackie Shroff who petitioned the Delhi High Court for legal protection against the unauthorised use of the term “Bhidu”.
To dismiss legal concerns regarding how deepfakes might affect the future earnings of Bollywood stars would be to ignore the demonstrably revolutionary powers of AI. Indeed, AI generated voices, deepfake videos and 3-D generated lifelike figures are raising troubling questions about privacy and ownership along with other issues to do with elections and politics. Deepfake videos are bringing dead actors, actresses and singers back to life while also creating digital clones of living music and movie stars. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was shown doing a traditional dance with a group of women which was fake, has flagged the dangers of deepfakes. “A new crisis is emerging due to deepfakes produced through artificial intelligence. We have a big section (of the population) that does not have the wherewithal to verify their genuineness and there lies the concern,” he said, adding that he had raised the issue with people in the AI industry. In February, 2024, he himself became the target of AI’s reckless and unmonitored growth when Google’s AI assistant Gemini, was sharply critical of his politics and ideology as Prime Minister. The chatbox was answering a question put to it by an individual user. The Indian government promptly issued a notice to Google seeking clarification regarding Gemini’s responses. Google, which is ironically headed by Sundar Pichai, of Indian origin, was quick to acknowledge the platform’s “unreliability”, and extended an apology to Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government. As a consequence, the IT Ministry sent an advisory to generative Artificial Intelligence companies such as Google, OpenAI and others, that their services should not generate responses that are illegal under Indian laws. The advisory said that platforms that currently offer “under-testing/unreliable” AI systems or large language models to Indian users must explicitly seek permission from the Centre before doing so and appropriately label the possible and inherent “fallibility or unreliability of the output generated”. That advisory backfired badly when protests erupted across the country among start-ups and newly launched AI apps. The government had to hastily backtrack and clarify that the advisory only applied to established entities, basically the tech behemoths in Silicon Valley. Just how insidious and dangerous deepfakes can be was demonstrated when a video emerged of world-renowned cardiologist and founder of the Medanta hospital group, Dr Naresh Trehan, recommending a particular weight loss drug. It was called out as a fake by the hospital authorities but thousands may have seen the video and acted on it, based on Trehan’s impeccable reputation.
Just as social media played a major role in the 2014 elections, experts believe AI will be an even bigger factor in future polls. A conference organised by the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu had a surprise “guest appearance” by Dravidian icon M Karunanidhi, who was displayed on a giant screen in his trademark dark glasses. In a voice that seemed unmistakably his, he praised the current leadership under his son and political heir. Karunanidhi died in 2018. The DMK closest rival, the AIADMK, did its own deepfake resurrection with a video of its departed leader J Jayalalithaa, urging voters to support the party. She died in 2016.
In May 2024, a legal notice was sent to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), emphasizing the urgent need for regulatory intervention to curb this misuse and protect individuals’ privacy rights. The notice highlights a case involving Kanchan Nagar, a professional model, who discovered her facial features being misappropriated in an advertisement by a leading travel company without her consent. This incident underscores the pressing need for regulatory measures to safeguard individuals’ privacy and prevent unauthorized use of their likeness for commercial purposes.
At the same time, the Narendra Modi government is embracing and encouraging AI in manifold areas. In 2020, India joined forces with 15 other countries to form the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). The purpose of this alliance is to establish frameworks for the “responsible utilization” of emerging technologies. He called for a global framework to manage and monitor the ethical and transparent use of the next-generation technology. At the same time, he warned of the dangers of it falling into the hands of terrorist organisations and other challenges such as deepfakes, cyber security and data theft. The Delhi Declaration, as it was named and signed by 29 member countries, underscored the need to mitigate risks arising from the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence. The declaration acknowledged the rapid spread of innovation and the potential to boost economic growth, but it also flagged concerns emanating from AI including misinformation, loss of jobs, lack of transparency and fairness, protection of intellectual property and personal data and threats to human rights and democratic values. India has been calling for a collaborative approach to building AI systems, holding up its model of Digital public infrastructure (DPI) as an example to the world. The GPAI is an attempt, largely led by democratic countries, to adopt a global risk-based approach to AI and includes the US, UK, France, Canada and Japan among others.
On March 7, 2024, the Union Cabinet approved the India AI Mission with an outlay of Rs 10,372 crore for the next five years, under which the government will allocate funds towards subsidising private companies looking to set up AI compute capacity in the country and also allocate seed funding for AI start-ups, and create a framework for curating non-personal data, among other things. Under the India AI Mission, the government will also help develop foundational models with a capacity of more than 100 billion parameters trained on datasets covering major Indian languages for priority sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and governance. The implementation of this AI compute infrastructure will be done through a public-private partnership model. Rs 4,564 crore has been earmarked for building computing infrastructure.
The Indian government has also introduced a National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems under which Technology Innovation Hubs (TIH) have been established on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, which aims to provide the state-of-the-art training and capacity building for the creation of next-generation scientists, engineers, technicians, and technocrats in the field of Artificial Intelligence. According to Nasscom-BCG, the apex tech industry body, India’s AI market is poised to reach $17 billion by 2027. The report also highlighted the fact that India has the second-highest talent base in the world with 420,000 employees working exclusively in AI projects.
India, right now, sees frontier technologies such as AI playing a role in its journey towards becoming a global economic superpower. The Indian government is pushing to put digital technologies at the heart of its inclusive development, partly through widespread internet access and one of the world’s most affordable data pricing schemes. That has resulted in some unique and path-breaking schemes, led by Aadhaar, currently the world’s largest biometric ID system. One of its predominant uses is to streamline Direct Benefit Transfer schemes where the subsidy money is directly transferred to an Aadhaar-linked bank account. Numerous forecasts suggest AI will add $967 billion to India’s economy by 2035 and $450-500 billion to its GDP by 2025. This will account for 10% of the country’s $ 5 trillion GDP target, making it a crucial tool for economic growth. One of those is CropIn, an intuitive, intelligent, self-evolving system that delivers future-ready farming solutions to the entire agricultural sector. It delivers AI-aided decision-making tools that can bring consistency, dependability and sustainability to agri-businesses. Other start-ups are using AI in cameras attached to crop sprayers to identify diseases and optimise water and nutrient treatment of plants. There is also CogniAble, founded by scientists from IIT-Delhi, paediatricians, psychologists, and BCBAs (Board Certified Behaviour Analyst) to provide people with high-quality, affordable management of autism-related diseases. Its artificial intelligence-powered operations aid in the early diagnosis and treatment of autism. In a feature called ‘AI for the people and by the people,’ Time magazine wrote about how Karya, a non-profit based in Bengaluru, is using AI to involve the rural poor in creating data sets in their own language which is then translated and sold to big tech companies. Much of the profit is funnelled back to volunteers in nearby villages. The goal, says the company, is to build a chatbox that can answer rural India’s questions; about health, agriculture, sanitation, banking and other areas where rural poverty can be reduced by the use of AI.
A survey by LinkedIn and Hope & Glory found that a third of the 2,045 surveyed employees in India are excited to use AI at work to shorten the time it takes to apply for jobs. Two in five of these employees also believe that AI will assist them in their job-search and career advancement by suggesting relevant connections.
The predominant and hotly contested debate over jobs, losses and candidate evaluation notwithstanding, India is creating a discernible buzz in the global AI scenario. In 2020, Indian companies were ranked second in AI adoption in the Asia Pacific. India has been ranked 1st in AI Skill Penetration and 1st in the Number of GitHub AI Projects according to the Stanford AI Index report 2023. The same Index places India 5th in the value of private investment in AI and number of newly funded AI companies. Also, India has been ranked 1st in all 5 Pillars of Peak AI’s Decision Intelligence Maturity Scale, which assesses a business’s commercial AI readiness. The NASSCOM report on the State
of Data Science & AI Skills In India also ranked India 1st in terms of AI skill penetration and 1st in AI talent concentration.
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said during his address to 1,100 developers and technology leaders at the Microsoft AI Tour in Bengaluru in February, 2024, that India is the fastest-growing market on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned software development platform, with 13.2 million developers using it.
Microsoft India launched the Azure Society of Excellence (ASE) in collaboration with premier technology institutes like Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, and BITS Pilani to work with startups and their incubation cells. The exclusive programme provides technological support and mentorship to startups, helping them to become future-ready.
The main impetus has come from global technology giants associated with the term Big Tech, such as Google, Amazon, and Meta who have a widespread presence in India. Meta has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with India AI, an independent business unit under the Digital India Corporation (DIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, to foster collaboration in the field of Artificial Intelligence. This collaboration will establish a framework of cooperation between ‘India AI’ and Meta in the field of Artificial Intelligence & Emerging Technologies including making Meta’s open-source AI models available for use by Indian AI ecosystems. SAP India, the German software giant’s local operation, is the fastest growing subsidiary of SAP SE, the world’s leading provider of business software solutions. SAP India began its operations in 1996 with headquarters in Bangalore and offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and a direct presence in nine cities across India. Declared as the ‘Hub of the year in Asia Pacific and Japan” in 2007, SAP India witnessed an unprecedented growth of over 100% both in terms of license revenue and customer acquisition.
Language technology is one of the critical areas where the Indian government sees AI making a breakthrough. In India, hundreds of languages are spoken, which makes knowledge sharing, skilling and access to information a considerable challenge. Jugalbandi is a new generative AI-driven chatbot, with Microsoft as a partner, on mobile devices for government assistance. It can understand questions in multiple languages, whether spoken or typed. It retrieves information on relevant programs – usually written in English – and relays it back in local language.
The country’s Supreme Court now translates orders and ruling into vernacular languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Marathi, Malayalam, Bangla, Telugu, Kannada, and Urdu with the help of the Samantar AI tool developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. However, as the serving Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense potential to transform the way legal professionals work. The full realisation of AI’s potential thus hinges on global collaboration and cooperation. While AI presents unprecedented opportunities, it also raises complex challenges, particularly concerning ethics, accountability and bias.” In a scenario where judges are saddled with enormous amount of workload and the plaintiffs bear the brunt of a snail-paced legal system, AI can be a boon if used selectively and with some human oversight. The integration of AI in the Indian judiciary is primarily focused on two key areas: case management and legal research. Another tool that is used by the Supreme Court is SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) which translates legal papers from English into vernacular languages and vice versa.
The sectors betting bigger on AI include Life Sciences and Health Care (60 percent respondents); Financial Services (56 percent); Technology, Media, and Telecom (45 percent); and Consumer Services (35 percent). The survey also showed that automating jobs is one of the top AI concerns for most businesses; 77 per cent respondents fear that AI adoption will lead to job cuts. Deloitte surveyed 200 senior executives across industries and business functions between April 2022 and May 2022. The survey included C-level executives (41 percent), senior management (42 percent), and other key decision-makers (18 percent).
Generative AI is a powerful and evolving technology that can bring huge benefits to India. However, it also poses many challenges and risks that need to be addressed by effective and responsible regulation. The thrust in adoption for enterprises is maximum in sectors such as communication, over-the-top (OTT) streaming and gaming technology and financial services.
Some companies, excited by the coming AI revolution, are upskilling their staff to face the AI-influenced future. Tech Mahindra in Mumbai have partnered with Google to launch Ops AmplifAIer, which enables teams to use generative AIU capabilities for future-proofing. India’s top IT companies – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro – have announced major investments in generative AI.
Nvidia, the American multinational technology company which is a dominant supplier of artificial intelligence hardware and software, is also working with the Indian government. Nvidia and Reliance Industries have announced a collaboration to develop India’s own language model trained on diverse languages and tailored for generative AI applications. Reliance Jio Infocomm is working with IIT Bombay to launch “Bharat GPT”, a large language model like ChatGPT but tailored to the needs of Indian users. What is worrying is the fact that India ranks number one among countries where false information is the biggest threat according to Statista, a German online platform that specializes in data gathering. In January, 2024, a word of warning came from none other than the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, M Rajeshwar Rao, who said that: “AI may pose some novel challenges for governance, specially where the technology is used to facilitate autonomous decision-making and may limit or even potentially eliminate human judgment and oversight.”
There are others who believe that employment (a major issue in the 2024 elections) and the shift towards AI, could prove problematic in the short term. In a speech on May 19, 2024 to an industry body where the theme was: ‘AI: What does the future hold?’, the government’s chief economic advisor, V Anantha Nageswaran, said: “In the long run, it (AI) may create jobs, but in the short term, there will be dislocations. We need to prepare the youth for AI, it is going to burst upon us in a very spectacular way in the coming years and will cause huge dislocations. That is a huge challenge in many countries, including India but our numbers make it that much more important and serious.” At the same event, S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said: “We have an opportunity to learn and figure out what has gone wrong in (in other countries) and make a framework that works for India. He did, however, also admit that AI’s impact on jobs was a “concern.” For those already in or entering the corporate world, that is a worrying prospect.