TCS banks on responsible AI toolkit to support customers with regulatory concerns

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services company, has launched a responsible artificial intelligence (AI) framework and toolkit for customers and cloud partners.

The launch comes as concerns around security risks and lack of regulations continue to grow especially amidst rapid pace of AI and generative AI innovation, a top company executive told Moneycontrol.

This toolkit, which is also available to cloud partners through marketplaces, will be ensuring governance checks and data security from a design level itself, as customers develop AI-enabled applications and solutions.

This comes a week after TCS released its Global AI study, which highlighted that over 81 percent of senior business leaders surveyed had asked for ‘global’ set of regulations and standards on artificial intelligence, as enterprises increasingly try to balance security risks and opportunities in their AI strategy.

“Customers are seeking regulations to ensure that the (AI) models will handle the data in a safe and secure manner along with being able to make fair decisions. They are also looking to make human centred designs and ways to protect the identity…This is where even regulators and governments the world over are seeking standards and they are also learning and keeping pace with the changes in the technology,” said Nidhi Srivastava, VP and global head, AI.Cloud at TCS told Moneycontrol in an interview.

“As service providers, we are coming up with frameworks. We have a responsible AI framework, toolkit and offerings around it. These ensure that as you are developing the applications, AI-enabled applications, you build responsibility by design,” she added.

Srivastava said that TCS is working with all stakeholders, including cloud service providers and customers, to integrate responsible AI offerings into their application design processes.

Not only TCS, but also peers like Accenture and Infosys have recently launched responsible AI toolkits. The responsible AI framework offerings by IT services companies include a mix of consulting services, AI models, and software solutions to enable ethical as well as safety guardrails around building AI technology.

AI.Cloud investments

AI.Cloud is a new business unit launched in July 2023, as a part of the company’s larger organisational restructuring under new CEO and MD K Krithivasan.

In terms of deal wins, the unit’s deal pipeline had already doubled to $900 million worth of AI and generative AI projects as of Q4FY24. TCS has won over 200 engagements in AI so far this year.

Krithivasan had said, “Subsequent to our launch of AI.Cloud unit, we are seeing an increased traction in our marketplace."

Srivastava shared that AI.Cloud was started by consolidating three separate business units of Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and pivoting to bring more focus on generative AI and AI.

“One of the first things that we did after coming together as this unit was to define our new service catalogue, which included offerings on Gen AI, as well as cloud. Then we also did massive upskilling, cross-skilling at TCS at scale. We were poised to meet our customers on their AI transformation journeys,” Srivastava said.

Till date, TCS has trained over 300,000 employees in AI skills. Krithivasan called it one of the largest AI-ready workforces in the world.

AI.Cloud is also one of the key business focus areas for expanding among emerging technologies for TCS in FY25.

In the company’s annual report for FY24, TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran highlighted that across industries globally, there are multiple mega trends that are shaping the priorities of businesses. These include AI, new energy, supply chain and talent.

“GenAI technologies will impact almost every sector and country going forward. Enterprises have already invested in cloud, data infrastructure and large processing power which will aid AI/ GenAI. GenAI will not only improve productivity, but also create impact we hitherto have not seen or imagined,” Chandrasekaran had said, as TCS plans to make significant investments into building AI capabilities.

According to Srivastava, TCS has been investing into building dedicated AI labs such as Pace Port centres, and setting up AI experience zones that will be like playgrounds for customers and companies to experiment with AI solutions.

It recently announced a human-centric global AI center of excellence in TCS PacePort campus in Paris. This is expected to be inaugurated in June 2024.

TCS will also be coming up with a dedicated AI platform called TCS AI WisdomNext, the company had said in its annual report.

“One of the significant investments has been in building a multi modal, hyperscaler agnostic, domain catalogue enabled, pattern driven, multi orchestrator GenAI platform called TCS AI WisdomNext to help customers accelerate their GenAI journey,” TCS had said in the report.