The government has launched BharatGen, a pioneering initiative in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) designed to revolutionise public service delivery and boost citizen engagement through developing a suite of foundational models in language, speech, and computer vision.
This initiative marks the world’s first government-funded multimodal large language model project focused on creating efficient and inclusive AI in Indian languages. It also seeks to create foundational AI models specifically tailored for India, reduce reliance on foreign technologies and strengthen the domestic AI ecosystem for startups, industries, and government agencies.
Spearheaded by IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the initiative will create GenAI systems that can generate high-quality text and multimodal content in various Indian languages.
BharatGen will deliver GenAI models and their applications as a public good by prioritising India’s socio-cultural and linguistic diversity. It strives to address India’s broader needs such as social equity, cultural preservation, and linguistic diversity, while ensuring that GenAI reaches all segments of society.
The four key distinguishing features of BharatGen are the multilingual and multimodal nature of foundation models; Bhartiya data set-based building, and training; open-source platform and development of an ecosystem of GenAI research in the country. The project is expected to be completed in two years along with plans to benefit several governments, and private, educational, and research institutions.