India on Tuesday announced plans to develop a sovereign model for strategic needs, aiming to establish localised tech solutions and IPs to navigate the power of large language models (LLMs), which are primarily from the USA and China.
As American large language models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and those from Anthropic and Perplexity, gained traction worldwide, China’s DeepSeek and Qwen emerged. The government is determined to develop India-specific models customised to the country’s requirements, languages, cultural nuances, and industry needs, IT and Electronics Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated at the India Impact Summit.
The Electronic Minister’s statement came after PM Modi visited the India Impact Summit, where he went into the pavilions of local firms, including Sarvam AI and gnani.ai, that are developing India-based solutions and IPs.
Ashiwini Vaishnaw clearly said that sovereign AI models are essential “so that we don’t remain dependent on others for our strategic requirements”. It also enabled India to develop new solutions. “This is all part of the sovereign AI process”.
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He further stated that the government is also focusing on AI’s harmful effects and that this issue is being discussed with leaders of other countries. Everyone believes that AI should be used for good. However, it has harmful impacts too that should be managed through a techno-legal approach. This approach is taken because it cannot be achieved through the law; technology is required. He also said, “In our AI safety institute, we are working with many academic institutions to create technical solutions to prevent the harmful impacts of AI”.
