New Delhi, February 19 – Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, announced the New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments on Thursday, a landmark outcome of the summit that brings together leading frontier AI companies and India's domestic innovators to advance inclusive and responsible artificial intelligence.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Vaishnaw positioned India's AI strategy as one rooted in democratization, scale, and sovereignty. He outlined India's comprehensive approach across the five layers of the AI stack – applications, models, compute, talent, and energy – emphasising real-world deployment in healthcare, agriculture, education, and public services.
"AI is a foundational technology. It is already transforming how we work, learn, and make decisions. Our Prime Minister believes that the true value of technology lies in ensuring that its benefits reach the masses. Our Prime Minister's vision is to democratize technology, deploy it at scale, and make it accessible to all. That is why in India, we are working on all five layers of the AI stack," he said.
"Once we honestly harness the benefits of AI, we must also find collective solutions for mitigating risks. By placing human safety and dignity at the heart of AI, we can move forward with conviction. Let us shape an AI future of the humans, by the humans, and for the humans," Vaishnaw remarked.
The voluntary commitments reflect a shared vision to ensure that the development and deployment of AI systems are aligned with equity, cultural diversity, and real-world needs, particularly across the Global South. Participating organizations include India-based innovators such as Sarvam, BharatGen, Gnani.ai, and Soket, alongside global frontier AI firms.
The first commitment, "Advancing Understanding of Real-World AI Usage," focuses on real-world AI usage through anonymized and aggregated insights. Participating organizations will work to generate evidence that supports policymaking on the impact of AI on jobs, skills, productivity, and economic transformation. By enabling data-driven analysis of how AI is being deployed across sectors, the initiative aims to help governments and institutions craft informed strategies that maximize benefits while mitigating risks associated with technological change.
The second commitment, "Strengthening Multilingual and Contextual Evaluations," centres on efforts to ensure the effectiveness of AI systems across languages, cultures, and real-world use cases. Organizations will collaborate with governments and local ecosystems to develop datasets, benchmarks, and expertise that support evaluation in underrepresented languages and cultural contexts. This effort will improve AI performance for diverse populations and help democratize access to high-quality AI experiences globally, while preserving flexibility in the choice of tools and evaluation methodologies.
The minister emphasised that collaborative action between governments, industry, and research communities is essential to ensure AI serves humanity at large. He invited leaders of participating organizations to join in advancing these commitments as a foundation for responsible AI development worldwide.