NEW DELHI: Google, the world’s most popular search engine, is working on making text and voice internet search available in over 100 Indian languages, its Indiaborn CEO Sundar Pichai said.
Sundar Pichai, who is visiting India, said the pace of technological change in the country has been extraordinary and Google is supporting small businesses and startups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, and applying AI (Artificial Intelligence) in sectors like agriculture and healthcare.
“I’m here to see progress being made from our $10 billion, 10-year India Digitisation Fund (IDF), and share new ways. We’re helping to advance India’s digital future at our Google for India event. “That includes our efforts to build a single, unified AI model that will be capable of handling over 100 Indian languages across speech and text – part of our global effort to bring the world’s 1,000 most-spoken languages online, and to help people access knowledge and information in their preferred language,” he wrote in a blog.
In July 2020, Google had announced plans to invest $10 billion in India over next five to seven years as the search giant looks to help accelerate adoption of digital services in the key overseas market. “We’re also supporting a new, multidisciplinary centre for responsible AI with IIT Madras,” Pichai said. “I’m excited to see the ways India will contribute to breakthroughs in AI that could benefit over a billion people in India, and more around the world,” he said.