Google Enhances AI Development in India with New Tools and latest Models

Google is making a strategic push to empower India's burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) developer community. The tech giant unveiled a comprehensive suite of tools, programs, and partnerships designed to equip developers with the resources they need to build innovative AI-powered solutions for the Indian and global markets.

This move underscores Google's recognition of India's unique potential in the AI landscape. "India is at the cornerstone of our global AI mission," declared Seshu Ajjarapu, Senior Director at Google DeepMind, in an interview. He cited India's massive mobile-first population, thriving startup ecosystem, and rich linguistic diversity as key factors positioning the country as a major driver of global AI advancements.

Why India Matters in AI

• Mobile-First Population: India boasts a vast user base accustomed to mobile internet access, creating fertile ground for mobile-based AI applications.

• Thriving Startup Ecosystem: India's burgeoning startup scene fosters innovation and provides a launchpad for novel AI-powered solutions.

• Linguistic Diversity: India's multitude of languages presents a unique challenge and opportunity for developers to create inclusive AI models.

Ajjarapu emphasized India's enthusiastic adoption of Google's Gemini family of AI models, used by over 1.5 million developers worldwide. He also highlighted India's significant user base on Google AI Studio, a platform designed for rapid prototyping and experimentation with generative AI models.

Focus on Multimodal, Multilingual, and Mobile AI

Manish Gupta, Director at Google DeepMind, outlined Google's commitment to three core areas – multimodal, multilingual, and mobile AI – which they view as critical opportunities in the AI domain. "We have been working diligently with our global colleagues to integrate these capabilities into Gemini," he said.

Wider Access to Powerful AI Models

Introducing Gemma 2:

Google unveiled Gemma 2, the next iteration of its open-source AI model, available to all developers in India. Debuting at Google I/O in May, Gemma 2 boasts a new architecture for enhanced performance and efficiency. It's offered in two sizes – 9 billion and 27 billion parameters.

Multilingual Powerhouse:

Gemma's tokenizer, adept at breaking down text into manageable units for AI processing, is particularly well-suited for crafting multilingual solutions that comprehend and respond to India's diverse languages. This potential was showcased by Navarasa, a multilingual variant for Indian languages built on Gemma by Telugu LLM Labs.

Unlocking the Potential of Indian Languages

Project Vaani:

Google, partnering with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and ARTPARK (Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Technology Park), launched Project Vaani's first phase. This initiative provides developers with over 14,000 hours of speech data in 58 Indian languages, collected from a vast pool of speakers. Project Vaani aims to gather and transcribe open-source anonymized speech data across all of India's districts in three phases, encompassing linguistic, educational, and demographic variations.

IndicGenBench:

To empower developers in building high-quality language models that effectively represent India's linguistic richness, Google introduced IndicGenBench, a multilingual benchmark suite designed specifically for Indian languages. This benchmark can assess the language generation capabilities of large language models (LLMs) across various user-facing tasks in 29 Indian languages.

Innovative Tools for Developers

CALM (Composition of Language Models):

Google open-sourced a new technology called CALM, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate their specialized language models with Gemma models. This empowers developers to create powerful, efficient, and nuanced solutions tailored to specific use cases and linguistic variations.

Matformer Framework:

The DeepMind India team played a pivotal role in developing the Matformer framework, designed to enhance on-device AI capabilities. This framework will be available in the forthcoming second version of Gemini Nano, enabling developers to combine different-sized Gemini models within a single framework, optimizing for both performance and resource efficiency. This translates to smoother, faster, and more accurate AI experiences directly on users' devices.

New APIs and Agricultural Focus

Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API:

Google announced the upcoming limited preview launch of the Agricultural Landscape Understanding (ALU) Research API. This API aims to leverage AI and remote sensing to map individual farm fields across India, potentially offering valuable insights at the farm field level. This data-driven approach has the potential to revolutionize agricultural practices in India.

India-Specific Pricing for Google Maps Platform:

Google introduced India-specific pricing for developers using the Google Maps platform, offering significant cost reductions on most APIs. Google Maps Platform APIs. 

This two-pronged approach aims to make location-based services more accessible and affordable for Indian developers, fostering innovation within the Indian app development landscape.

Here's a breakdown of the potential benefits:

• Reduced Costs for Developers: Indian developers will benefit from significant discounts on most Google Maps Platform APIs. This translates to lower development costs, making it easier for them to build innovative location-based applications without breaking the bank.

• Boost for ONDC Ecosystem: The substantial discounts offered to developers building for ONDC can significantly incentivize the creation of new applications that leverage ONDC's infrastructure. This can contribute to the growth and adoption of ONDC, a crucial initiative for India's e-commerce sector.

• Enhanced User Experiences: By making location-based services more accessible to developers, Google's move has the potential to fuel the development of a wider range of innovative applications that utilize maps and location data. This can lead to richer and more user-centric experiences for Indian mobile phone users.

Overall, Google's introduction of India-specific pricing for the Google Maps Platform and its collaboration with ONDC represent a strategic move to empower Indian developers and foster a more vibrant app development ecosystem in the country.