PM Modi inaugurates India AI Impact Expo featuring 13 country pavilions

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo in New Delhi as the five-day AI Impact Summit began in the national capital.

The Expo features over 600 high-potential startups and 13 country pavilions showcasing international collaboration in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) ecosystem. Modi also interacted with startups participating in the Expo. He visited various stalls, spoke with company representatives and was seen asking questions to better understand what they were showcasing. The prime minister spent several minutes at different stalls while interacting with representatives.

Spread across 10 arenas covering more than 70,000 square metres, the Expo brings together global technology firms, startups, academia and research institutions, Union ministries, state governments and international partners. It includes over 300 curated exhibition pavilions and live demonstrations structured across three thematic chakras — people, planet and progress.

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In addition to the startups, the Expo features 13 country pavilions showcasing international collaboration in the AI ecosystem. These include pavilions from Australia, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Serbia, Estonia, Tajikistan and Africa. Many of the participating startups are building globally relevant and population-scale solutions and are demonstrating working solutions already deployed in real-world settings.

The AI Impact Summit is the fourth annual global gathering addressing the problems and opportunities posed by AI, following previous meetings in Paris, Seoul and Britain’s wartime code-breaking hub Bletchley. Touted as the biggest edition yet, the Indian government is expecting tens of thousands of visitors from across the sector. The event includes 20 national leaders and 45 ministerial-level delegations, along with technology executives including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Google’s Sundar Pichai.

The five-day summit aims to declare a “shared roadmap for global AI governance and collaboration”. The Delhi summit is organised around the themes of “people, progress, planet”, described as three “sutras”. AI safety remains a priority, including concerns around misinformation such as deepfakes. Panels and roundtables at the venue addressed topics ranging from road safety in India to how South Asian women are engaging with the technology.

In a post on X, Modi wrote: “The AI Impact Summit will enrich global discourse on diverse aspects of AI, such as innovation, collaboration, responsible use and more.” He added that the summit is “further proof that our country is progressing rapidly in the field of science and technology,” and “shows the capability of our country’s youth”.

However, questions remain about whether world leaders will take concrete steps to regulate AI companies. Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, said: “Even the much-touted industry voluntary commitments made at these events have largely been narrow ‘self regulatory’ frameworks that position AI companies to continue to grade their own homework,” She added: “There is real scope for change” but warned it might not happen fast enough to prevent harm to minors.

At last year’s AI Action Summit in Paris, dozens of nations signed a statement calling for efforts to regulate AI technology to make it “open” and “ethical”. The United States did not sign, with Vice President JD Vance warning that “excessive regulation… could kill a transformative sector just as it’s taking off”.

Organisers have highlighted that this is the first AI summit hosted by a developing country. India’s IT ministry has said: “The summit will shape a shared vision for AI that truly serves the many, not just the few,”.

Last year, India rose to third place in an annual global ranking of AI competitiveness calculated by Stanford University researchers, overtaking South Korea and Japan. However, experts say India still has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.

Globally, AI is expected to disrupt jobs in sectors including software development, factory work and filmmaking. In India, large customer service and tech support sectors are seen as particularly vulnerable. Shares in Indian outsourcing firms have fallen in recent days, partly due to advances in AI assistant tools.

At the summit, startup co-founder Peush Bery said AI voice tools “will definitely remove that job” within a few years, referring to Indian call centres. He added: “New jobs come up, new fields come up,” including roles focused on working with data to ensure AI tools can recognise many different accents.

(With inputs from agencies)