Unlocking potential: How BHASHINI's AI is bridging language gaps for all Indians

New Delhi: India’s national language AI platform BHASHINI has transitioned from traditional rule-based systems to advanced AI-driven engines, offering more inclusive digital language services to citizens and moving closer to full societal inclusivity, senior government officials said.

The Digital India BHASHINI Division under the IT Ministry hosted “BHASHINI Samudaye: Strengthening India’s Language AI Ecosystem” in New Delhi in collaboration with Wadhwani AI. The initiative aims to strengthen India’s language AI ecosystem through collaboration, participatory governance, and shared digital infrastructure.

Amitabh Nag, CEO of Digital India BHASHINI Division, said Samudaye focuses on building a “living ecosystem” where data creators, annotators, translators, developers, users, and government bodies co-develop language technologies with shared value and responsibility.

Experts highlighted the importance of structured datasets, domain accuracy, and community participation in ensuring AI systems truly represent India’s linguistic and social diversity. The discussions stressed collaboration between government, academia, civil society, and industry to scale language AI initiatives across the country.

According to the Ministry, the workshop brought together language experts, institutions, civil society groups, and data practitioners to explore real-world use cases and develop frameworks for co-creating and governing AI language solutions under the National Language Translation Mission (NLTM).

BHASHINI now supports translation at sentence, discourse, and conversational levels across all 22 scheduled Indian languages, along with several non-scheduled languages and dialects. Experts noted that challenges remain in certain Dravidian languages due to limited datasets, but ongoing collaboration aims to ensure no language is left behind.

BHASHINI has also launched the Dataset Onboarding Supporting Team (DOST), in partnership with the Gates Foundation and implemented by Civic Data Lab, to help identify and integrate high-value datasets into BHASHINI and AI Kosh, strengthening India’s AI language ecosystem.

The platform is positioned as a key pillar in Digital India, helping bridge linguistic barriers and expanding access to digital services for millions of citizens.

IANS