Google To Extend $8 Million Financial Support to India's AI Centres
Apart from Google, the other architects of AI models are Gemini and Gemma which are integrated for search enhancements, cloud services, and enterprise tools. Google is also supporting Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI, and BharatGen with $50,000 grants each for building models serving Indic language solutions
New Delhi: Google on Tuesday announced funding support of $8 million to India's artificial intelligence or AI centres of excellence for health, agriculture, education, and sustainable cities, and committed $4,00,000 to support development of India's health foundation model. “The announcements mark a slew of new collaborations and funding commitments by Google to bolster India’s AI ecosystem,” the company said.
Apart from Google, the other architects of AI models are Gemini and Gemma which are integrated for search enhancements, cloud services, and enterprise tools. Google is also supporting Gnani.AI, CoRover.AI, and BharatGen with $50,000 grants each for building models serving Indic language solutions.
Google also said in a statement that the company is providing Wadhwani AI with $4.5 million in funding to support multilingual AI-powered applications for health and agriculture. “Google announced funding of $4,00,000 to support new collaborations that will leverage MedGemma to build India’s health foundation models,” the company said.
As such models aim to raise the efficiency of healthcare providers and improve patient outcomes across India, Google further said that Ajna Lens would work with experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to build models that will support India-specific use cases in dermatology and OPD triaging.
“The resulting models will contribute to India's digital public infrastructure and their outcomes will be made accessible to the ecosystem. Additionally, researchers, AI experts, and clinicians from IISc will explore using AI models for broader clinical applications,” Google said.
“To push its inclusive AI agenda, Google announced a $2 million founding contribution to establish the new Indic Language Technologies Research Hub at IIT Bombay. The initiative aims to ensure global advancements serve India's linguistic diversity,” it added.
Meanwhile, electronics and IT secretary S Krishnan said that the government is inclined to avoid introducing new laws or regulations for AI unless absolutely necessary, preferring instead to utilise existing legal frameworks like the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act to address emerging issues.
“As it is, we are a country with many laws. So my own inclination always is to avoid putting in a new law, a new regulation, unless you absolutely have to. Try to see what we can do with existing law. Our approach to regulation of AI thus far has been very, very grounded and has been very, very clear that under no circumstances do we want to get in the way of innovation,” Krishnan said in an event here.
