• Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh launched ‘BharatGen’, an indigenously developed artificial intelligence-based multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) for Indian languages, on June 2.

• BharatGen aims to revolutionise AI development across India’s linguistic and cultural spectrum. 

• It is developed under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) and implemented through TIH Foundation for IoT (Internet of Things) and IoE (Internet of Everything) at IIT Bombay.

• The initiative is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and brings together a consortium of leading academic institutions, experts, and innovators.

• BharatGen as a national mission aims to create AI that is ethical, inclusive, multilingual, and deeply rooted in Indian values and ethos. 

• The platform integrates text, speech, and image modalities, offering seamless AI solutions in 22 Indian languages.

• This initiative will empower critical sectors such as healthcare, education, agriculture, and governance, delivering region-specific AI solutions that understand and serve every Indian.

• In order to promote cultural identity and regional development, BharatGen provides technologies and tools that will support the development of region-specific content by seamlessly translating across local languages and dialects.

• BharatGen is building partnerships with research groups across the country, to ensure that the generative AI models being developed can be extended by partners and made available to the larger research and non-academic community for further development and usage. 

• It is also developing partnerships with the government, industry and start-ups for applications geared towards efficient administration and public at large, including marginalised and underrepresented communities in the country.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)