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The Google DeepMind India team has shared updates to enable developers to build language solutions for India.
Tech giant Google on Wednesday unveiled a range of tools, programs and partnerships to enable Indian developers and startups to be at the forefront of the global artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
At Google I/O Connect Bengaluru 2024, the company announced that it is working with MeitY Startup Hub to train 10,000 startups on AI. It is expanding access to its AI models like Gemini and Gemma.
It also introduces new language tools from Google DeepMind India and enhances software development with AI-powered features, with a focus on responsible AI.
As part of its Gemini era, the company is working to bring the power of multimodality to everyone, expanding the types of questions you can ask with advances in long-form pop-ups.
Today, over 1.5 million developers worldwide use Gemini models in their tools.
The fastest way to build with Gemini is to use its Google AI Studio developer platform. India today has one of the largest developer bases on Google AI Studio.
“At Google, we’ve been investing in AI for over a decade, delivering fundamental advances that have led us to the exciting era of Gemini. AI is a powerful tool and a major inflection point that will require us to continually reimagine what’s possible,” said Ambharish Kenghe, vice president of Google.
“We are committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness the full potential of AI, creating solutions that not only address India’s unique needs, but also shape the future of AI globally. The opportunities presented by multimodal, mobile and multilingual AI are immense,” Kenghe added.
Google said it is democratising AI for Indian developers by focusing on three key areas that have transformative potential in India: multimodal, multilingual and mobile.
The company is working with MeitY Startup Hub to support 10,000 Indian startups in their AI journey, through Google Cloud credits, an AI-focused programming program, and the launch of a nationwide GenAI hackathon and bootcamp for AI startups.
Developers in India now have expanded access to Google’s powerful AI models with the 2 million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the next generation of open models.
The Google DeepMind India team has shared updates to help developers build language solutions for India. This includes the expansion of Project Vaani, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
It provides developers with more than 14,000 hours of speech data in 58 languages, collected from 80,000 speakers in 80 districts.
The team also presented IndicGenBench, a comprehensive benchmark to evaluate the generation capabilities of large language models (LLMs) on Indian languages, and the open-source Composition of Language Models (CALM), a framework that allows developers to combine specialized language models with Gemma models.
Google also introduced the MatFormer framework, allowing developers to mix and match AI models within a single framework for optimal performance and resource efficiency.
“India is at the forefront of the AI revolution, as evidenced by the innovations pioneered by Indian companies. From customer experiences to agriculture to social enterprises, AI has the power to solve some of the biggest challenges of our time across many sectors and industries,” said Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind. He added, “At Google, we remain committed to helping developers and entrepreneurs advance and deploy technologies that make a tangible difference in people’s lives.”
Google is also introducing Google Wallet APIs to simplify integration with loyalty programs, tickets, and gift cards. For developers using Google Maps Platform, India-specific pricing is being introduced with up to 70% lower costs on most application programming interfaces (APIs). Google is also partnering with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), offering developers building for ONDC up to 90% off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.
“AI is changing the fundamentals of software development, including how developers think about what’s possible and how they build it. At Google, we believe that all developers are AI developers. We want to empower them to build with AI across everything, whether it’s web, mobile, or cloud,” said Jeanine Banks, vice president and general manager of Developer X at Google.
The company will also soon launch the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, a limited-availability tool designed to make farming practices more data-driven and efficient.
First published: July 17, 2024 | 2:45 p.m. IST
