The India AI Impact Summit to be held in New Delhi in February 2026 will witness deliberations between world leaders and top global tech leaders, leading to a formal declaration on ways to balance innovation and safety and the areas to be focussed for artificial intelligence innovation, Mohammed Y. Safirulla K., Director, IndiaAI Mission under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, has said.
In an interview to The Hindu on the sidelines of a pre-summit conference here on Thursday, Mr. Safirulla said India can take pride in that it is the first country in the Global South to host the summit. New Delhi is hosting the fourth edition of the summit.
Objectives of summit
The objectives of the AI Impact Summit include democratisation of AI and bridging the AI divide, development of indigenous and local AI, aligning global standards and models for AI governance and innovation to needs of the developing world, harnessing AI for social good and development, and positioning India as a leading voice of the Global South on AI. The deliberations will take place across seven working groups, in which experts from over hundred countries will participate.
“We can see that there is a concentration of AI resources in certain countries in the Global North, especially when it comes to high-end data centres. There are biases which are coming out of algorithms because it is developed only from situations focussing on certain countries. We can also notice a language-wise divide since much of it is in English. One of our focusses will be on democratising AI so that no country in the Global South is left behind,” says Mr. Safirulla.
The summit will also address issues surrounding the fear of job losses and equipping job-seekers to meet the needs of the changing job market.
Training for youth
“We will look at how to train the youth coming into the job markets to be ready for AI-related jobs. Also, we need to see how we can use AI to increase the efficiency of the people who are already in the job markets working in various domains or how do we reposition them. We also have to nurture this intentionally in society so that we achieve economic growth,” he says.
Earlier this year, the IndiaAI Mission had opened up the MyGov platform to collect innovative ideas across sectors from researchers, startups, and students. Some of the innovation will be focussed on developing tools to authenticate AI-generated content, ensuring it’s traceable, secure, and free of harmful materials. Deepfake detection tools will also be developed to enable real-time identification and mitigation of deepfakes.
Published – November 20, 2025 09:12 pm IST
