DPDP Act an opportunity to drive ethical AI growth, says Adobe India MD Prativa Mohapatra

Adobe India MD Prativa Mohapatra

Adobe India managing director Prativa Mohapatra views India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act as an opportunity to strengthen the software giant's commitment to ethical AI, even as AI companies navigate stricter data privacy regulations.

Mohapatra, spoking to Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas on March 18, and emphasised that Adobe’s AI models have been designed with regulatory safeguards from the outset, relying solely on licensed data.

“Our AI models are commercially safe, which is a key differentiator. From the outset, we ensured that our models were trained on data we own—such as stock images with appropriate licenses. This is the sustainable model in the future, as enterprises and end customers will increasingly demand AI solutions that respect data ownership,” she said in an interview with Moneycontrol.

Mohapatra was responding to a query about whether the company sees the DPDP Act's requirement for clear, explicit consent from users as a risk for training generative AI models.

Mohapatra highlighted that many AI companies struggle with data ownership issues due to reliance on publicly available content for training their models. In contrast, Adobe has taken a more structured approach, she said.

Adobe’s generative AI models also allow businesses to train custom models on proprietary data, ensuring compliance with evolving data protection laws, Mohapatra added.

Engaging with the IndiaAI Mission

India’s Rs 10,738 crore IndiaAI Mission includes key focus areas such as compute infrastructure, datasets, skilling, and AI governance.

Mohapatra said that Adobe has been working on AI skilling programs with central and state governments and views the initiative as a formalisation of its ongoing efforts,

“We have a very strong creativity and AI skills program that we drive with the government across various departments and educational institutions. The course content keeps evolving based on new technological advancements,” Mohapatra said.

Adobe is also involved in AI governance, particularly around content authentication. The company’s Content Credentials initiative, which creates a digital watermark to verify the origin of AI-generated content, has been adopted by Indian media houses.

The Adobe India outlook

Adobe India, with 8,500 employees, is the company’s second-largest presence globally after the US. The India teams contribute significantly to Adobe’s three core product categories—Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, and Experience Cloud, Mohapatra informed.

Notably, India played a major role in developing Firefly, Adobe’s generative AI model for images, vectors, and video content.

“Much of Firefly’s vector AI work happened out of India. Similarly, a lot of AI-based development for Acrobat Assistant is being done here,” Mohapatra said.

With AI talent in high demand, Adobe India continues to expand its workforce in data science, AI, and machine learning. “There is a demand-supply gap in AI talent, and we are actively hiring, though I can’t share exact figures. But if not thousands, definitely hundreds of new roles are being created,” she said.

Disclaimer: The author is in Las Vegas at the invitation of Adobe