Context: Recently, the Ministry of Science & Technology launched BharatGen which is world's first Government-Funded Multimodal Large Language Models (LLM) Initiative.

• It is aligned with the goal of Making AI in India and Making AI for India. 

• The initiative is designed to revolutionize public service delivery and boost citizen engagement by developing a suite of foundational models in language, speech, and computer vision.

About BharatGen

• Aim: Creation of Generative AI systems that can generate high-quality text (including speech) and multimodal content in various Indian languages. 

• Implementing Agency: IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). 

• The project is expected to be completed in two years, with plans to benefit several government, private, educational, and research institutions.

• BharatGen will cater to text and speech, ensuring coverage across India's diverse linguistic landscape. Training on multilingual datasets will deeply capture the nuances of Indian languages, which are often underrepresented in global AI models.

• Unlike models that rely on global datasets, BharatGen focuses on developing processes for collecting and curating India-centric data, ensuring that the country's diverse languages, dialects, and cultural contexts are accurately represented. 

• This emphasis on data sovereignty strengthens India's control over its digital resources and narrative.

Features

• Building and training based on Bhartiya data set: Collect and curate India-centric data, reducing dependence on foreign models. 

• Multilingual and multimodal nature: Ensuring representation to the country's diverse languages, dialects, and cultural contexts. 

• Open-source platform: Accessible to all citizens: Ensuring Industrial, Commercial, Cultural, and Inclusive technological development. 

About MLLM and Generative AI 

• MLLM are Large Language Models (LLM) trained on large datasets including both text and non-textual data (image, audio, video, etc.)

• LLM uses machine learning and is capable of recognizing and interpreting human languages or other complex data. 

• Generative AI is the most well-known application of LLM. 

• Generative AI includes algorithms/deep-learning models that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, etc.

• National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), 2018

• Objective: Brings together academia, industry, government and international organizations to foster entrepreneurship, translational research, and commercialization of CPS technologies.

• CPS are networked systems in which the computational (cyber) part is tightly integrated with the physical components. E.g., autonomous vehicles, etc. 

• Implementing Agency: Department of Science and Technology (DST). 

Road Ahead

• BharatGen aligns with the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat by creating foundational AI models specifically tailored for India. By developing AI technologies within India, BharatGen reduces reliance on foreign technologies and strengthens the domestic AI ecosystem for startups, industries, and government agencies. Democratizing access to AI through foundational models and detailed technical recipes allows innovators, researchers, and startups to build AI applications quickly and affordably.