Speaking on the role of AI in shaping the global south, former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said, “The way AI is evolving, it's putting in a huge amount of investment leading to a huge amount of disruption, but it will end up creating a highly unequal society unless it is made multilingual for the masses.”

He also highlighted the challenges and emphasised focusing on ensuring that AI reaches those below the poverty line and transforms the lives of citizens in the global south.

“We should be focused on whether AI can be used to improve learning health outcomes, improve nutritional standards, which are a major challenge in the world. The important thing is that today we are in India, I mean, if you look at OpenAI, ChatGPT, we are providing more data than the United States of America, 33% more data than what the United States of America do,” he said.  

India is rapidly building a robust, sovereign multilingual AI ecosystem to bridge linguistic barriers across its 22+ languages. Multilingual AI in India is rapidly advancing through government-backed, sovereign initiatives like BharatGen and Bhashini, designed to support over 22 Indian languages across text, speech, and document modalities.

What Is Multilingual AI 

Multilingual AI refers to artificial intelligence systems designed to understand, process, and generate content across multiple languages, bridging language gaps in real-time. These models enable tools like chatbots, virtual assistants, and translation services to interact with users in their preferred language, enhancing global communication and accessibility. 

Global AI Models

Kant observed that large volumes of data originating from developing economies are already being used to refine global AI models. This, he argued, strengthens the case for India to build its own AI models trained on domestic datasets rather than relying entirely on foreign platforms.

“These large language models are getting better based on data provided by global south, so the models are getting refined on the data of global south, they will create business models that will sell products at high cost. Therefore, it’s important that when global south develops its models, they are made better on their own data,” he added.  

Five-Day Summit

The India AI Impact Summit, running February 16–20, is the first major global AI summit hosted in the Global South. It marks a pivot from earlier safety-centric gatherings in the UK, France and South Korea towards impact, inclusion and governance at scale.

India’s vision of responsible and inclusive AI is technology that serves people, planet and progress, which are the summit’s three “sutras” or guiding themes.

Over 20 heads of state and ministerial delegations from 45 countries are on the guest list, part of an ambitious effort to expand AI conversations beyond a handful of tech capitals. Leaders include French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, among others. It’s a roster that brings geopolitical heft to New Delhi.

On the industry side, global tech leaders such as Sundar Pichai (Google & Alphabet), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and others are participating in panels and fireside chats. One notable absence is Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, who was unable to attend despite Nvidia’s central role in the global AI hardware ecosystem.

This mix of politics and technology sets the tone for discussions that span everything from AI in healthcare and education to governance frameworks and equitable access.