Context:
Recently, the Ministry of Science & Technology launched BharatGen, a generative AI initiative designed to enhance public service delivery.
Relevance:
GS II: Government Policies and Interventions
BharatGen
- BharatGen is an initiative aimed at developing core models in the domains of language, speech, and computer vision, with a focus on India’s rich cultural and linguistic diversity.
- It stands as the world’s first government-supported project to create a Multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) specifically for Indian languages.
- LLMs are advanced AI models that can comprehend and generate human languages by analyzing extensive text datasets.
- This initiative is spearheaded by IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), working in collaboration with prestigious academic institutions, including several IITs and IIM Indore.
- A key focus of this project is on developing frameworks that curate India-specific datasets, giving the country greater control over its digital resources. The initiative has several defining features:
- Development of multilingual and multimodal models,
- Training based on datasets that reflect Indian languages and contexts,
- A commitment to using an open-source platform,
- Establishing a research ecosystem focused on generative AI within India.
