In a significant move to bolster its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, India has decided to host China’s open-source AI model, DeepSeek, on local servers, even as it accelerates efforts to develop its own large language model (LLM) within the next ten months. The two-pronged approach was announced by Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, on Thursday, just days after China’s DeepSeek unveiled its low-cost AI model that has shaken up the tech world.
“The good thing is that DeepSeek is an open-source model, and we are very soon going to host DeepSeek on Indian servers, the way we have hosted Llama (a large language model/generative AI model developed by Meta AI) on Indian servers. Everything that is open source can be hosted on our servers so that data privacy parameters can be tested,” the minister said, assuaging concerns about potential misuse of data on the new Chinese AI platform.
However, India’s long-term goal remains the development of its own LLM. This effort will be powered by the newly established IndiaAI Compute Facility, which has secured 18,600 graphics processing unit (GPUs), including 15,000 high-end processors. GPUs are critical for the development of advanced AI models.