Centre prohibits officials using ChatGPT, DeepSeek
Perceiving data risk factors, the Union Finance Ministry has asked its employees not to use any Artificial Intelligence (Al) tools or apps in office devices. The Department of Expenditure, in a communication, said it has been determined that Al tools and AI apps in office computers and devices pose risks to the confidentiality of Government data and documents. The communication also named some AI tools like ChatGPT, DeepSeek etc.
“It has been determined that AI tools and AI apps (such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek etc.) in the office computers and devices pose risks for confidentiality of (government) data and documents,” said the advisory by the finance ministry dated January 29, 2025.
The employees have been advised to strictly avoid the use of Al tools/AI apps in office devices. Economic Survey 2024-25 has envisioned a practical, reliable, scalable and efficient artificial intelligence model for adoption in India.
“Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India will have its first foundational Artificial Intelligence model in about 10 months from now. The government is going to host an open source model like Chinese ‘DeepSeek’ on Indian servers. This comes at a time when Chinese startup has challenged the AI world,” said the communication.
Last week outlining global AI ambitions with plans to build its own ‘foundational model’ that could take on the might of ChatGPT, Deepseek R1 and others, Vaishnaw said the government has lined up “most affordable” common compute facility powered by 18,693 GPUs to be used by startups and researchers.
The government is also calling for proposals to develop India’s own foundational models that would be aligned to Indian context, Indian languages, culture, basically where datasets are “for our country, of our country and for our citizens” and “biases are removed”.
Put simply, foundation models in generative AI are large, pre-trained models that form the base for a variety of AI applications. “Making modern technology accessible to everyone, that is the economic thinking of our PM... Ours is the most affordable compute facility, at this point of time,” Vaishnaw said.
The government, under the IndiaAI Mission, had approved Rs 10,372 crore outlay to strengthen India’s AI ecosystem - a key pillar for that was enabling 10,000 GPUs for AI Compute Infrastructure. The 18,693 GPUs would offer large compute power considering that Deepseek was trained on 2,000 GPUs and ChatGPT version 4 on 25,000 GPUs.
On the applications under India AI mission, India’s focus has been about utilising the power of Artificial Intelligence for solving population-scale problems, in areas such as healthcare, education, agri, logistics, weather forecasting and others.
