Google to empower 10,000 Indian startups in AI, unveils new tools

Bengaluru, July 17 (IANS) Google on Wednesday said it is working with MeitY ‘Startup Hub’ to train 10,000 startups in artificial intelligence (AI), as the tech giant expanded access to its AI models and introduced new language tools for the developers in the country.

At its ‘I/O Connect’ event here, the company unveiled a range of tools, programmes and partnerships to empower Indian developers and startups to be at the forefront of the global AI revolution.

The company said that developers in India now have expanded access to Google's powerful AI models with the two million token context window in Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemma 2, the next generation of open models.

“We're committed to empowering Indian innovators to harness AI's full potential, creating solutions that not only address India's unique needs but also shape the future of AI globally,” said Ambharish Kenghe, Vice President, Google.

The opportunities with multimodal, mobile, and multilingual AI are immense, and we're thrilled to be a part of India's AI journey, he added.

“The fastest way to build with Gemini is through its developer platform Google AI Studio, and India has one of the largest developer bases on Google AI Studio today," said the company.

The Google DeepMind India team has expanded Project Vaani, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which provides developers with over 14,000 hours of speech data across 58 languages, collected from 80,000 speakers in 80 districts.

The team also introduced IndicGenBench, a comprehensive benchmark to evaluate the generation capabilities of LLMs on Indic languages, and open-sourced CALM (Composition of Language Models).

The company said it is introducing Google Wallet APIs to simplify the integration of loyalty programs, tickets, and gift cards.

For developers using the Google Maps Platform, India-specific pricing is being introduced with up to 70 per cent lower costs on most APIs.

Google is also collaborating with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), offering developers building for ONDC up to 90 per cent off on select Google Maps Platform APIs.

“From consumer experiences to agriculture, to social enterprises, AI has the power to address some of the biggest challenges of our time across many sectors and industries,” said Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director, Google DeepMind.

The company will also soon launch the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API, a limited availability tool designed to make agricultural practices more data-driven and efficient.

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