India invests in indigenous AI models to combat bias, ensure data sovereignty: MeitY Secy

• Government invested in developing indigenous and sovereign AI models to address bias and ensure systems are trained on Indian data.
• MeitY Secretary S Krishnan emphasized the importance of sovereignty, stating India needs control over AI models.
• Initial debate on using open-source vs. indigenous models concluded with India creating its own for critical reasons.
• Key reasons include addressing bias, ensuring models represent India's cultural and linguistic diversity, and supporting multiple Indian languages.
• BharatGen, launched in October 2024, is India's sovereign AI model project for services like ASR and TTS in Indian languages.