Subject: Government Policies and Interventions
*(*Relevance: Today, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword. India has also launched an AI mission and promised to make heavy investments in an indigenous AI language model. Additionally, UPSC has previously asked questions on AI in CSE Prelims. Thus, in the backdrop of the AI Impact Summit 2026, it becomes important to know about the significant AI-related initiatives taken by India.)
Why in the news?
India is hosting the AI Impact Summit 2026 in NewDelhi from today (February 16) to February 20. TheAI Impact Summit 2026 is the fourth edition in a series of such global gatherings, the first of which was held in the United Kingdom to serve as a forum for politicians and frontier AI CEOs to tackle the potential existential risks posed by advanced AI systems. In this context, let’s learn about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit and various AI initiatives taken by the government.
Key Takeaways:
1. AI Impact Summit 2026 marks the first time the AI Summit is being held in the Global South, following previous events in Seoul and Paris. The theme of the summit is s****arvajana hitaya, sarvajana sukhaya — welfare for all, happiness for all.
2. The summit is intended to generate actionable recommendations that contribute to long-term AI governance objectives rather than framing immediate binding regulations.
3. The three main goals of the AI Impact Summit 2026 are leveraging AI to empower people and promote innovation, projecting India as the service provider for AI for the whole world, and democratising access to compute, datasets, and algorithms.
4. It comprises seven working groups, termed ‘chakras’, that will cover topics such as: ‘Resilience, Innovation, and Efficiency,’ ‘Human Capital,’ ‘Safe & Trusted AI’, ‘Science’, ‘Democratising AI Resources’, ‘Inclusion for Social Empowerment’, and ‘AI for Social Good & Economic Development’.
5. Notably, the summit represents the latest chapter in an evolving international conversation on AI governance. What began as the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023, where 28 countries signed the landmark Bletchley Declaration focusing on identifying AI safety risks, has progressively broadened its scope.
6. The Seoul Summit in May 2024 expanded discussions to include innovation and inclusivity alongside safety, while the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025 emphasised practical implementation and economic opportunities.
7. India’s pitch is somewhat different. Where previous summits wrestled with catastrophic risks and regulatory frameworks, New Delhi is centring the conversation on what Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan calls “People, Planet, and Progress” – to build AI solutions that focus on on-ground issues, an approach that reflects India’s position both as an aspiring AI power and a voice for the Global South.
Important AI initiatives
1. IndiaAI Mission: The IndiaAI Mission seeks to create a comprehensive ecosystem that encourages AI innovation by democratising computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, facilitating industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially impactful AI projects, and promoting ethical AI.
— This mission promotes the responsible and inclusive growth of India’s AI ecosystem through the following seven pillars:
(i) IndiaAI Compute Capacity
(ii) IndiaAI Innovation Centre
(iii) IndiaAI Datasets platform (AIKosh)
(iv) IndiaAI Application development initiative
(v) IndiaAI Future skills
(vi) IndiaAI Startup Financing
(vii) Safe and Trusted AI
— Launched in 2024, the mission has made strong progress in expanding the country’s computing infrastructure. From an initial target of 10,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), India has now achieved 38,000 GPUs, providing affordable access to world-class AI resources.
Do you Know?
A Graphics Processing Unit is a powerful computer chip that helps machines think faster, process images, run AI programs, and handle complex tasks more efficiently than a regular processor.
2. Adi Vaani: The Ministry of Tribal Affairsin September last year rolled out the beta version of ‘Adi Vaani’, an AI-based translation tool that will serve as a foundation for large language models dedicated to tribal languages. Made using AI and efforts of academicians and educators proficient in tribal languages, the app will translate Hindi and English to tribal languages and vice-versa, and also aims to help digitize and preserve these languages.
3. BharatGen: It is a pioneering generative AI effort that aims to transform public service delivery and increase citizen involvement by establishing a set of basic models in language, speech, and computer vision.
— BharatGen will provide generative AI models and applications as a public utility, focusing on India’s socio-cultural and linguistic diversity. It aims to address India’s greater concerns, such as social fairness, cultural preservation, and linguistic variety, while also guaranteeing that generative AI reaches all sectors of society.
— BharatGen connects with Atmanirbhar Bharat’s goal by developing foundational AI models exclusively for India. It will support both text and speech, ensuring coverage of India’s unique linguistic environment.
4. BHASHINI: Launched in July 2022 under the National Language Technology Mission, BHASHINI is an AI-based language translation tool designed to facilitate real-time translation of Indian languages to establish a National Public Digital Platform for languages and increase the amount of content available in Indian languages.
— It aims to provide translation services in 22 scheduled Indian languages to break through linguistic barriers and enable people to access digital services smoothly. The BHASHINI project is designed to integrate technological advancements in governance with multiple language integration, fostering national integration and creating a more inclusive society by adopting artificial intelligence tools.
5. SabhaSaar: On the occasion of Independence Day last year, an AI-powered tool named ‘SabhaSaar’ was rolled out in Tripura and thereafter made available to other states.‘SabhaSaar’ leverages the power of AI to generate structured minutes of meetings from gram sabha videos and audio recordings.It will bring uniformity in minutes of the gram sabha meetings across the country. Panchayat officials can use their e-GramSwaraj login credentials to upload video/audio recordings on ‘SabhaSaar’.
— ‘SabhaSaar’ is built on Bhashini. The tool generates a transcription from a video or audio, translates it into a chosen output language, and prepares a summary. It enables transcription in all major Indian languages like Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati, in addition to English.
6. Chitralekha: It is an open source platform for video subtitling across various Indic languages, using ML model support. It offers support for multiple input sources, transcription generation process and voice over.
7. Bharat-VISTAAR: The Centre on Tuesday (February 17) will launch the Bharat-VISTAAR(Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources), an AI-powered multilingual tool designed to provide information to farmers in their own language via mobile or a simple phone call. The tool will offer guidance on crop planning, packages of practices and pests, weather forecasts, markets, scheme information, eligibility, application, and grievance.
BEYOND THE NUGGET: What is Artificial Intelligence?
1. Artificial Intelligence is the ability of machines, especially computers, to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include things like understanding language, recognising patterns, solving problems, and making decisions.
2. Essentially, AI enables machines to think and learn from experience, just like humans do, but often at a much faster pace with access to vast amounts of data.
3. AI can be classified into two types: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) also known as weak AI and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) also referred to as strong AI.
4. ANI is designed for specific tasks and excels within a narrow domain. Examples include virtual assistants like Siri, recommendation systems on platforms like Netflix, and image recognition software. ANI systems are highly specialised and cannot transfer their expertise to unrelated tasks.
5. In contrast, AGI aims to replicate human cognitive abilities, enabling it to perform any intellectual task a human can do. AGI would possess general reasoning skills, understand context, and adapt to new situations across various domains. It would be capable of autonomous learning and problem-solving without requiring task-specific programming.
