AI summit brings investment and regulatory challenges to India
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Summit, welcoming world leaders from more than 20 countries and major AI industry giants. Several new investments were announced, while India is adopting new regulations governing the use of advanced technologies.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – After Buckinghamshire, Seoul, and Paris, New Delhi is hosting the 4th AI Impact Summit, from 16 to 20 February, at the Bharat Mandapam Convention Centre, inaugurated in 2023 for the final session of the G20.
Senior AI leaders and more than 100 world leaders gathered for what Indian officials describe as a platform to amplify the voices of developing nations in global AI governance.
The summit, held for the first time in a Global South country, features more than 500 sessions and 3,250 expert presentations.
Five days of panels, masterclasses, and technology presentations will explore a broad range of topics, including the impact of AI on media and entertainment, translation devices, and innovations in gaming and film.
Keynote speakers at the summit include Sundar Pichai (Alphabet CEO), Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO), Dario Amodei (Anthropic and Reliance CEO), along with Mukesh Ambani (Reliance chairman), and Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind CEO), who will speak on Thursday.
Twenty-one political leaders will be in attendance, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, and Greek President Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“The theme of the summit is ... welfare for all, happiness for all, reflecting our shared commitment to harnessing Artificial Intelligence for human-centric progress," India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X.
In his opening remarks, Modi declared that India is at the forefront of the development of artificial intelligence: an ambitious commitment fraught with responsibility.
For New Delhi, the summit must focus on the social and economic impact of AI – “People, Planet, and Progress” is one of the central themes proposed by the Indian government.
India has increasingly become a hub for AI companies, with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon already pledging US$ 68 billion in investments in AI and cloud infrastructure by 2030.
With 1.4 billion people, the South Asian nation is also OpenAI's largest user market, with more than 72 million daily users on ChatGPT at the end of 2025.
The summit represents a perfect opportunity for India, which is leveraging the event to attract greater investment in the sector.
The country has allocated Rs 10 billion (about US$ 110 million) to strengthen its AI ecosystem through research and development, access to resources, and support for startups.
The goal is not only to develop models capable of competing with those of the United States or China, which are very expensive and complex, but also to expand existing platforms on a large scale to create useful services in sectors such as agriculture, education, and healthcare.
In this regard, during the summit, India's Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Jagat Prakash Nadda, launched two national initiatives: the Strategy for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for India (SAHI) and the Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI (BODH), designed to ensure the safe, ethical, and inclusive adoption of AI in the healthcare sector.
Ambitious expansions of AI infrastructure were also announced at the summit. The government plans to more than double GPU (graphics processing unit) capacity within the next six months, a key element for powering advanced AI models.
At the same time, Indian company Yotta Data Services announced a US$ 2 billion investment to create one of Asia's largest AI computing hubs, while the Adani Group unveiled a US$ 100 billion plan to develop AI data centres by 2035 powered by renewable energy.
The slogan of industry giants and some political figures so far has been: “there's nothing to fear”.
Yet, while many speakers have highlighted the opportunities offered by AI, there is also a need for regulation against its misuse, particularly in the creation of deepfakes that fuel misinformation.
Another key issue concerns employment. There is widespread concern that AI could, in many sectors, replace workers in their roles and contribute to rising unemployment.
According to the US investment bank Jefferies, the adoption of artificial intelligence particularly threatens jobs in the US$ 283 billion IT sector.
The same organisation estimates that call centres in India could experience a 50 per cent drop in revenue by 2030 due to automation.
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