According to Business Today, Director of Google Research India, Manish Gupta, mentioned in a session at the BT Tech Today Congress that Google AI Lab in Bengaluru is currently developing an AI model to preserve almost 100 Indian languages by integrating them into various Google products such as its generative AI tool Bard.

“Our team has been taking the lead on building multilingual models. Initially, we released a model which provided support for 16 Indian languages. It was used in the Google Assistant product and made available to the researchers and practitioners. We are now working on a model supporting over 100 Indian languages. Some of these models are beginning to make their way into some of the Google products, not just existing products like Assistant, but also upcoming products like Bard. We have been working closely with those teams to improve their capability to understand and respond in Indian languages”, Gupta added.

In 2019, Google rolled out its AI research lab in Bengaluru during its fifth Google for India event edition. The company proclaimed the lab would have a dual focus, it aims to advance fundamental computer science and AI research through team-building and partnerships. The lab will also apply this research to address critical challenges in major sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and education and thereby improve the functionality of widely-used apps and services.

He further explained, “Ours is a relatively young lab. We started less than four years ago, and the entire team was built from scratch. We had this very intense focus on both making foundational contributions to AI and applying it to solve big problems, especially those inspired by the Indian context”.

Gupta said, the team is working to democratise the access to information by developing various multilingual models. The models are capable of offering comprehensive support for the multiple languages within a single system. They also revealed that the team has already selected speech samples from 773 districts across India by collaborating with Indian Institute of Science.

Gupta opines that AI has massive potential to benefit humanity, which was why one of their focus right from the lab’s inception was to develop AI in a way to benefit the underprivileged. He also claimed that the AI lab had a significant impact on enhancing the health of expecting mothers and babies as well.