A consortium supported by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. and leading engineering schools in India is gearing up to introduce its inaugural ChatGPT-style service next month.
The BharatGPT group, comprising a branch of India’s most valuable company and eight affiliated universities, provided a preview of the large language model during a technology conference held in Mumbai on Tuesday.
Dubbed “Hanooman,” the ChatGPT-style model has been developed by a consortium of companies and research institutions led by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, which will be backed by wireless carrier Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. and India’s government.
Recently, Hanooman was showcased at an event, offering several capabilities. In demos, the AI model conversed in Tamil with a bike mechanic, in Hindi with a banker, and helped a developer write computer code.
Hanooman will support up to 11 Indian languages and focus on four key areas such as governance, healthcare, education, and financial services.
Reliance aims to eventually incorporate Hanooman across its businesses and platforms to improve its offerings for Indian consumers. Reliance Jio will build customized models for specific uses, he said. The telecom-to-retail conglomerate is already working on Jio Brain, a platform to use AI across a network of about 450 million subscribers.
BharatGPT is positioning itself as a homegrown alternative to ChatGPT and other reliable AI models that are not optimized for Indian contexts. Creating customized models tailored to local languages and expertise domains aligns with the government’s effort to enhance AI innovation and its practical uses.
As one of the first made-in-India models targeting consumers, Hanooman could gain significant market share if it delivers on its functionality and accuracy promises.
The Indian government is developing AI regulatory guidelines, which should be released by June or July of this year. India’s AI market, through its government, is projected to reach $7.8 billion by 2025.
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