OpenAI to process AI requests in India to meet data localisation needs

OpenAI on Thursday announced local processing of artificial intelligence (AI) requests in India for its application programming interface (API), allowing eligible businesses and developers to run supported workloads on its GPT-6 Luna model within the country to help meet data localisation needs.

For supported workloads, both the processing of a request and the model computation that generates the response will take place in India, the company said in a statement. Supported customer content will also be stored in the country.

"Some Indian businesses have not fully deployed AI for important work because they need the information involved to be processed within the country. Local inference gives them more control over where supported workloads run and helps address a practical barrier to adoption.

"It gives more businesses a way to put OpenAI's tools to work, and gives Indian developers and startups more scope to build for their own, and enterprise needs," Nitin Bawankule, Head of Enterprise for India at OpenAI, said.

Where AI processes information can decide whether an application moves into production for Indian organisations, OpenAI noted, adding that this is particularly relevant to financial services customers with specific localisation requirements.

The launch covers direct use of the API. For now, local processing supports GPT-6 Luna input and output through the company's Responses and Chat Completions APIs, OpenAI said.

Customers can start by creating a new API project with India selected for both storage and processing, and using the India regional endpoint.

The offering can be used for text-based work such as summarising documents, drafting responses and helping employees analyse information, the company said.

OpenAI's API inference residency is available in other parts of the world, with India, Australia and Japan being the most recent additions.