Teams developing indigenous AI model to be selected soon, receive funding: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw

A few selected teams are soon set to receive funding for developing India-specific generative AI models, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on April 7.

Vaishnaw, who was speaking on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi, "The evaluation of the AI LLM applications is in its final stages. Within the next few weeks, we will have the first few LLM model teams, which will start getting funding under the mission."

The government has set a target for around 10 months to come up with India-specific generative AI models. It had earlier clarified that it is not just on the lookout for large language models, but it can be small language models and so on.

Vaishnaw also said that the government has been receiving a strong response for the second tranche of the GPU empanelment process.

" As you know, after the first 14000 GPUs that we got as a part of the AI mission, the empanelment process for the second trans is on and we are getting equally good response for the second trans also which means that our startup community, our AI researchers will get a very large GPU compute facility in coming days," he informed.

Additionally, he also informed that a number of industries have started creating AI applications and many of them have been recognised by the IndiaAI mission.

"My interaction with Education, Healthcare and industrial organisations shows that people are adapting AI in a very big way for multiple uses. So that's a very positive thing and that also means we will be able to get the most productive advantage out of this AI revolution," he added.