IIT Madras: Centre to build Open-source AI for Indian languages

On July 29, 2022, the “Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat’ was launched, in a bid to build Open-Source AI for Indian Languages. It was launched by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT) Madras.

Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat:

  • The Nilekani Centre at AI4Bharat will work to advance Indian Language technology.
  • Rohini and Nandan Nilekani are supporting the centre, with a grant of Rs 36 crore via Nilekani Philanthropies.
  • During the launch ceremony, a workshop open to students, researchers, and start-ups was organised, in a bid to discuss the resources available for building Indian language technologies.

About AI4Bharat:

  • AI4Bharat is an initiative by IIT Madras.
  • It has been started to build open-source language AI for Indian Languages.
  • In last two years, a team led by Dr Mitesh Khapra, Dr Pratyush Kumar and Dr Anoop Kunchukuttan has contributed to Indian language technology, which also include state-of-the-art models for Machine Translation and Speech Recognition.
  • This initiative would contribute to and accelerate Indic language AI work as a public good.
  • It has been aligned with objectives of Digital India Bhashini Mission.

The Digital India Bhashini mission was launched with the objective of making all services and information available to citizens in their own language. Collaborative AI is at the core of the design. In India, there is a rich diversity of languages, which required to be in sync with the expanding digital world. Thus, it is essential to make significant advances in language technology for the benefit of common man.


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