A false claim by a Galgotias University professor stirred an unpleasant incident at the historic and very successful India-AI Impact Summit that concluded yesterday on 21 February 2026, in New Delhi. It was a week-long gathering of representatives from over 100 countries, including more than 20 Heads of State and Governments, along with over 500 global AI leaders comprising CEOs, founders, academicians, researchers, CTOs, and philanthropic organisations.
The overwhelming response of the people with over 3 lakh footfalls, mostly under the age of 35, tells the success story of the event that entered the Guinness World Records when over 2.5 lakh students took a pledge to use AI responsibly within 24 hours, surpassing the estimated target of 5,000. The atmosphere was simply electrifying; one needs to be there to witness and feel such a marquee event. Due to a large turnout at the summit, the government had to extend it by one day till 21 February. In between, registration for the summit was suspended due to an unexpected rush and a large turnout jostling for entry at Bharat Mandapam.
However, the incident of a Chinese robotic dog that was showcased as the creation of Greater Noida-based Centre of Excellence at the Galgotias University left a bad taste in the mouth when it turned out to be a Unitree Go2 robotic dog, manufactured by China’s Unitree Robotics. Instead of apologizing and putting an end to the incident when caught red-handed, the overenthusiastic professor representing the university entered into an argument with the media, blowing it into a controversy that became the headlines in the newspapers and a topic of discussion on TV and social media.
The government was quick to act and asked the University to vacate its expo space immediately. On the University’s part, it tendered an apology that is laughable, saying that the concerned professor was ill-informed and in her enthusiasm for being on camera, gave factually incorrect information. A lame excuse is always more terrible than a lie, as it is a guarded lie. The explanation was pure hogwash and a lie to cover a blatant and straightforward “passing off” of plagiarism! A “passing off” plagiarism is the act of submitting someone else’s entire work as your own, constituting serious academic dishonesty and intellectual theft, often termed as global or complete plagiarism.
The opposition parties, especially the Congress, immediately pounced on the opportunity and targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government, declaring the summit a spectacle that is devoid of substance and a show-off event that failed miserably. Both the mainstream and social media with vested interests went berserk and blamed the Indian education system as inefficient and dishonest under the BJP rule. I wonder how one stray act of plagiarism reflects on the entire education system in the country, especially under Modi’s rule! While it is true that our education system is not perfect and has a lot of shortcomings that need to be addressed, we still produce the world’s largest educated workforce that is both highly knowledgeable and skilful, and above all in high demand globally.
Notwithstanding the unpleasant incident, let me highlight the positive side of the summit, which I feel will lead to some major outcomes, post-event. Called the India-AI Impact Summit 2026, it was the fourth in the series of international AI summits that started in 2023 in the UK. As the theme suggests, the event clearly laid out a roadmap underlining the motto “From a vision to action” by transitioning from mere dialogues to demonstrable impact. Anchored in the principles of People, Planet, and Progress, it envisions a future where AI advances humanity, fosters inclusive growth, and safeguards our shared planet.
At the summit, Indian entrepreneurs, startups, and students exhibited a wide array of practical applications of AI-driven solutions designed for real societal challenges focused on sovereign AI, healthcare, agriculture, defense and robotics. The technologies on display demonstrated that artificial intelligence is no longer confined to laboratories; it is steadily becoming a part of our everyday lives.
As it is impossible to mention 1000+ AI models displayed at the summit, ten of the most talked about homegrown AI innovations are listed: i) SARVAM AI showcased BULBUL V3, a text-to-speech model supporting over 11 Indian languages, and SARVAM KAZE AI smart glasses, designed to interpret surroundings and communicate in local languages, ii) GNANI AI introduced VACHANA, a speech model trained on over a million hours of audio to generate natural-sounding voices in Indic languages, iii) BHARATGPT generative AI platform tailored for Indian languages and context, iv) BIG-O HEALTH to analyse patient conditions, review global studies, and suggest cancer treatment courses, v) EKASCRIBE to manage medical prescriptions, patient history, and filing to assist in areas with limited medical professionals, vi) AEROARC ROBOTIC MULE for Indian Army for surveillance and logistics in extreme terrains (-40°C to +55°C). This was also on display in the January 26 Republic Day parade this year, vii) MANKOMB for home appliance that processes kitchen waste and converts it into organic soil, viii) E PLANE for a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (e-VTOL) aircraft designed to function as an air taxi in congested cities, ix) AGRICULTURE DATA EXCHANGE tools to support farmers, x) EXTRAMARKS to detect cheating in examinations and verify authenticity in interviews.
In the history of AI, this summit is a pivotal moment for India, where Indian companies and AI infrastructure will see a significant jump, post-summit. Such an event was necessary because for a long, long time, Indian IT companies have served as backend service providers. This summit will now force big companies like Infosys, TCSs, Wipro, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, LTI Mindtree, Persistent Systems and many others to invest aggressively in R & D to develop our own LLMs (Large Language Models) and create Indian platforms equivalent to ChatGPT/Open AI GPT5.2, DeepSeek, Google Gemini, CoPilot and several others for multimodal operations on text, coding, images, audios and videos that can produce outputs that feels surprisingly human.
An LLM in simple language, is an advanced artificial intelligence framework trained on massive amounts of text data from books, articles, codes, and websites. Using this training, it learns patterns of human language and can generate coherent, context-aware responses. LLMs are the foundation of Generative AI at its core and refers to artificial intelligence that can generate new content, be it text, images, code, music, or even videos based on patterns it has learnt from existing data. Unlike traditional AI, which mostly analyses or classifies, generative AI actually creates and answers questions like a human assistant. It can write blog posts, emails, stories, generate computer codes, translate languages, act as copilots in education, healthcare and business. In short, Generative AI has revolutionised the way we work, learn and communicate today.
LLMs are evolving extremely fast as we move towards Agentic AI systems. Agentic AI systems are a next-generation form of artificial intelligence that can act autonomously to achieve specific, high-level goals with minimal human intervention. Unlike traditional AI or generative AI (like ChatGPT), which typically require step-by-step instructions or prompt-and-response interaction, agentic systems are designed to plan, reason, and act on behalf of the user. Sounds crazy but true!
I will conclude my memorable experience at the summit on a sad note as on the penultimate day on 20 February (Friday) a handful of half-naked Indian Youth Congress goons of 45 + years age barged into Exhibition Hall No 5 holding T-shirts with images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump printed on them, along with slogans such as “India-US Trade Deal”, “Epstein Files” and “PM is compromised”. This flagrant act and display of nudity and nuisance was meticulously planned to create ruckus at the summit and tarnish the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. The shameful manner of protest by the hooligans of the Youth Congress maligned the image of our country before an international gathering and needs to be strongly condemned by one and all.
The Congress Party under Rahul Gandhi has reached a nadir point with no hope of resurrection till the Chinese sympathiser’s troika of his mother and sister are at the helm. At the summit we saw two versions of Indian Gen Z, one, the brilliant youth of our country representing the best Indian brains and talent in AI due to opportunities under several initiatives of the government and the other, Rahul Gandhi’s Indian Youth Congress of hooligans of 45+ years exposing the ugly side of its leaders who are bent upon tarnishing the image of India and stop the galloping economy and rising stature of our country on the global arena. The choice is before us to pick sides. Humiliating India to target the government and his hatred towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a standard template of Rahul Gandhi’s modus operandi both within and outside the country. His foot soldiers at the summit have embarrassed and lowered the prestige of 140+ crore Indian people. This outrageous act reflects the frustration of an unsound mind of a person who is dreaming to lead the country, one day. His lying lips while delivering slanderous speeches in the Parliament conceal hatred for the Prime Minister and the country. Mr. Gandhi should remember, nothing good ever comes out of frustration, and the slander spread by him leads only to one destination, MISERY.
