OpenAI execs meet tech, policy groups to discuss India's data, AI landscape

A day after OpenAI Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman reposed faith in India’s potential for artificial intelligence (AI) innovation, senior executives from the company met government officials, representatives of technology policy groups, industry bodies, and legal firms in two separate meetings on Thursday. The discussions focussed on understanding India’s AI and data regulation policy landscape, sources who attended these meetings told Business Standard.

  “The idea of these meetings with us was to get an overview of the data and AI regulations in India. They (OpenAI executives) were trying to understand the data governance framework in India, the implications of possible AI regulations in the industry, the impact on labour and workforce due to AI, among other things,” a person who attended these meetings said.

 

  Both these meetings, held behind closed doors, also saw OpenAI executives, including Vice-President of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan, explain the products and offerings and the importance of India in the overall plans of the company.

  The second meeting was attended by nearly 20-25 industry and technology policy advocacy groups such as Nasscom, The Quantum Hub, The Dialogue, Broadband India Forum, BSA, The Centre for Internet & Society, and Youth ki Awaaz; and representatives of law firms such as Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. 

Sources who attended these meetings also said that OpenAI executives wanted to understand India-specific use cases, the nature of work being done by using its foundation models and products, and apprised them of the product investment type that the company is planning in near future.

  The company’s executives also tried to get a sense of the copyright laws in India and the challenges they are likely to face as and when they expand their presence in the country, a representative of a technology policy group who attended the second meeting said.

 

Earlier on Wednesday, Altman, who was on a one-day tour of India, met Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, initially in a closed-door meeting that lasted close to half-an-hour, followed by a fireside chat with him.

Altman along with OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil and Narayanan also met Indian startup leaders such as Aloke Bajpai, the group CEO of travel planning platform Ixigo, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the CEO of Paytm, Kunal Bahl, the co-founder of Snapdeal, Raghav Verma, the co-founder of Chaayos, Gaurav Munjal, the CEO of edtech platform Unacademy, and Aakrit Vaish, the CEO of Haptik. 

OpenAI’s executives also conducted meetings with developers and listened to their concerns on the high pricing for application programming interface (APIs), and the issues around specific use cases, and apprised them of the developments and improvements in the company’s tools and services.

  In the Wednesday meeting, OpenAI executives had also acknowledged that India was their second-largest market and recognized the need to enhance support for Indic languages. They demonstrated how every new model they’ve launched has improved in accuracy and showcased notable advancements in Indian languages like Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Punjabi, Malayalam, and others.