The tech giant, Google, announced today that it is collaborating with MeitY’s “Startup Hub” to provide 10,000 startups with artificial intelligence (AI) training. Additionally, the company expanded access to its AI models and unveiled new language tools for Indian developers.
During its ‘I/O Connect’ event, the company showcased an array of resources, initiatives, and collaborations aimed at enabling Indian developers and startups to lead the global artificial intelligence revolution.
According to the company, with the addition of the two million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the upcoming open models, developers in India now have greater access to Google’s potent AI models.
“We’re committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness AI’s full potential, creating solutions that not only address India’s unique needs but also shape the future of AI globally,” said Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google.
The opportunities with multimodal, mobile, and multilingual AI are immense, and we’re thrilled to be a part of India’s AI journey, he added.
“The fastest way to build with Gemini is through its developer platform Google AI Studio, and India has one of the largest developer bases on Google AI Studio today,” said the company.
In partnership with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), the Google DeepMind India team has extended Project Vaani. This partnership offers developers access to over 14,000 hours of speech data in 58 languages, gathered from 80,000 speakers spread across 80 districts.
The group also unveiled open-source CALM (Composition of Language Models) and IndicGenBench, a thorough benchmark to assess LLM generation capabilities on Indic languages.
The company announced that in order to make the integration of gift cards, tickets, and loyalty programs easier, Google Wallet APIs are being introduced.
India-specific pricing with up to 70% lower costs on most APIs is being introduced for developers using the Google Maps Platform.
Additionally, Google and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) are working together to provide developers with up to 90% off on a selection of Google Maps Platform APIs.
“From consumer experiences to agriculture, to social enterprises, AI has the power to address some of the biggest challenges of our time across many sectors and industries,” said Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind.
The Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, a limited availability tool intended to improve the efficiency and data-drivenness of agricultural practices, will also soon be launched by the company.
