Transcript of Special briefing by MEA on Prime Minister's visit to France (February 11, 2025)
India - Ministry of External Affairs
February 11, 2025
Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: Good afternoon, friends. I warmly welcome you to this press briefing on the Prime Minister's ongoing visit to France. We have with us Foreign Secretary, Shri Vikram Misri, Secretary MeitY, Shri S. Krishnan. We are also joined by our Ambassador to France, Shri Sanjeev Singla, and Joint Secretary (Cyber Diplomacy) in the Ministry of External Affairs, Shri Amit A. Shukla.
With that, I invite Foreign Secretary Sir to make his opening remarks. Sir, over to you.
Shri Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary: Thank you, Randhir. Good afternoon, all. Just a few words about Prime Minister's ongoing visit to France. At the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron, as you know, Prime Minister arrived in Paris yesterday on a visit to France for co-chairing the AI Action Summit and also to attend a number of bilateral engagements.
On arrival at the airport yesterday, he was welcomed by the French Minister for Armed Forces, H.E. Sébastien Lecornu. You would have perhaps noticed on arrival at the hotel yesterday evening, the Prime Minister received a very warm and enthusiastic traditional welcome by the Indian community in Paris.
Prime Minister's first engagement yesterday was a dinner hosted by President Macron in honor of the visiting Heads of State and Government, and other Heads of International Organizations, tech entrepreneurs who are all here for the AI Summit. And at the dinner, Prime Minister interacted with several leaders and representatives of the tech industry.
This morning, Prime Minister and President Macron were together co-chairing the plenary session of the AI Summit. I leave the details of the AI Summit to my colleague and dear friend, Secretary MeitY, Shri S. Krishnan. But on the bilateral front, I think the Summit adds yet another aspect to the growing India-France strategic partnership, and in keeping with our track record of cooperation in a number of areas, whether it's space, defense, nuclear, critical technologies, it's only natural that we cooperate in the artificial intelligence sphere as well. And you'll be seeing, as the visit goes on, that there will be bilateral deliverables as well on the AI front.
Besides that, the Prime Minister today held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the AI Summit with the President of Estonia, His Excellency Alar Karis. This was the first meeting between the two leaders, and both of them expressed satisfaction at the growing bilateral cooperation in several fields, including especially the IT and digital sphere, and agreed to ...[missing audio]... the President will be jointly addressing the ... and following that, Prime Minister will depart for Marseille, where also bilateral engagements between him and President Macron are foreseen. And we'll update you on the substantive part of the bilateral visit perhaps sometime tomorrow.
But let me stop there, and I'll pass the floor to Secretary MeitY, Shri Krishnan, to brief you on the AI Summit.
Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY: Thank you, Vikram. The Honorable Prime Minister, co-chaired along with President Macron, the AI Action Summit here in Paris. This is the third in a series of AI Summits, starting with the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit in the UK, followed by the AI Summit in Seoul last May.
This time around, the emphasis was ... it was called the AI Action Summit. And the emphasis has truly been on innovation-driven AI, as opposed to the accent being on safety and security. And the whole tenor of the meeting, and the entire Summit was much more positive in orientation with the emphasis on the possible opportunities for innovation and positive development that AI presents, as opposed to a fear about what the harms could be or what the negative outcomes could be. And this was partly driven also by India's own mindset and India's own attitude towards what AI offers, and India's policy position on AI has been that the emphasis needs to be on the possibility of innovation and the possibility that it offers for greater productivity and opportunity to leapfrog.
India has endorsed the leader's statement on inclusive and sustainable AI, has also given a commitment to AI for public interest, which were the two major outcomes of this particular Summit. Both on sustainability and covering the aspect of how it can be used for positive benefits.
India has also supported the establishment of the AI Foundation, as the Prime Minister had already offered.
In terms of global AI governance efforts, India co-chaired that particular thematic working group, along with France, and a cartograph has been prepared to identify where the gaps in the AI governance systems lie across major international organizations, and hopefully those will be filled as we go along.
India has also joined the coalition on sustainable AI, ensuring AI's alignment with the environmental and sustainable development goals. This complements India's AI compute strategy, which my Ministry, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, is leading under the India AI mission.
The aspect on future of work, we are also part of the collaborative network of AI observatories on work, and NASSCOM, which is an industry body in India, is representing India in this particular aspect.
On AI security and risk management, CERT-In, which is our Computer Emergency Response Team in India on cyber-security issues, is part of a joint high-level risk analysis group, so we are working on that aspect as well.
On the whole, we believe that the Summit represents very positive outcomes, not just for India and for the global south, but also for the world as a whole. We believe it represents a re-balancing of the approach towards AI. And therefore the time is right for India to host, as the Prime Minister offered, and the offer was accepted that the next AI Summit would be hosted in India later this year. And this will follow-up on the fact that in 2023 India was the chair of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, GPAI.
Incidentally, there was an informal Ministerial gathering of GPAI as well on the sidelines of the AI Summit, where again broadly similar goals were emphasized, and India emphasized both at the Ministerial meeting and also the Prime Minister made the point forcefully today that GPAI's membership also needs to be expanded.
Currently, the Secretariat is with the OECD based here in Paris, but the expectation is that broadly, currently the membership is at 44 countries, and we should see a further expansion of the membership of GPAI as well.
So, with all of this, we believe that the possibilities of collaborating globally on harnessing the positive benefits of AI should happen, and we should also have a number of other countries who are participating ... [Audio missing]
Speaker1: [Audio missing] ... Global South, because India is the voice of the Global South, and also one more question is that is India working on its own chat box as well?
Sidhant: Sir, I have a question, first to Foreign Secretary and Secretary Krishnan. Foreign Secretary, there is this growing discourse about AI race amongst the big countries, big players on global stage. How do India look at this AI race? I want your comments on that. And Secretary Krishnan, if you could elaborate a little bit on how India has contributed to make AI Action Summit successful, because we've been told that we were part of five working groups, and in fact we helped France in conceptualizing this entire event. There is definitely ... it is a recognition of Prime Minister Modi's vision and the way he had unveiled the roadmap of AI India last year, but if you can elaborate a little bit how we, India, has contributed to this Summit. Thank you so much.
Vishal Pandey, ABP News: Sir, main Vishal Pandey hoon ABP News se. Pradhan Mantri ne kaha hain ki cyber suraksha, galat soochna aur deepfake par jo chintayein hain, unka samadhan karna hoga. Kya ispar charcha hui? Koi prastav aaya hain ki kaise in samasyon se nipta jaaye, kyunki Bharat mein bhi aur poori duniya mein deepfake ek bahut chinta ka vishay hain?
[Question in Hindi: Approximate Translation] Sir, I am Vishal Pandey from ABP News. The Prime Minister has said that concerns regarding cyber security, misinformation, and deepfake need to be addressed. Was this discussed? Has any proposal come up on how to deal with these issues, as deepfake is a major concern not only in India but across the world?
Shri Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary, India: Well, I think this is also down your alley, but let me just say that this element of, or this perception of global race ... I think, yes, there have been statements made, and positions taken that would perhaps contribute to this perception. But I think I would go by what the Prime Minister emphasized in his remarks today, that AI must be developed for the global good and it must be developed for all. And therefore, while there may be countries or corporates or enterprises that might be in a race, I think from our perspective in India, and I think the Secretary is at better place to comment on this ... our perspective is more in terms of outcomes and objectives, and those objectives are to increase global public good through the development of AI. Other countries will do what they have to do. We through our national AI mission will do what we see is the right thing to do and this is not something in which we will necessarily be influenced or allow ourselves to be influenced by geopolitics. Our emphasis is going to be on outcomes and deliver the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary MeitY: Thank you. On the first question on what India has done for the Global South primarily and how we have represented the interests of the Global South. I think we need to understand that right from the time of the G20, where we brought in AI into the G20 narrative as well, and part of the G20 declaration focused on what needs to happen in terms of AI and inclusive AI. And even at that stage the African Union and various other entities were brought into G20. So, it was fairly clear that we were speaking up for the Global South in this particular space.
As you are also aware that we are working very closely with the Global South on expanding the scope of DPIs and deploying digital public infrastructure in those areas. We already have MOUs with 17 countries and growing where we are supporting them with DPIs and DPIs and the establishment of DPIs there could also logically lead to more AI getting used in that space. So, in that sense again we are supporting what needs to happen with the Global South.
Even today the Prime Minister spoke out that there needs to be inclusion, and the Global South needs to come in. In the GPAI Summit we invited a number of countries of the Global South to join and undoubtedly in the next Summit also, which India will be hosting, we will make sure that the Global South is adequately represented. So, in that sense I think no one can really question India's commitment towards expanding the benefits of AI and digital public infrastructure to the Global South.
There was this other question on what India is doing about India-based chatbots. We are using a number of chatbots already in a number of spaces including in the space of agriculture. It is already being extensively used as part of the Agri Stack program that has been deployed. Even in other areas within our DigiLocker system, within our Umang system where you can access a number of government programs, Indian chatbots have been developed and are being used.
A very extensive use here is made of Bhashini which currently is now available for 22 Indian languages. So, it is possible to actually for a farmer or any other common citizen to seek replies or get clarifications in their own language and that translation has been truly enabled.
How has India contributed to the success of this particular Summit. I think India's contribution has been significant. We have engaged right from the month of May in all of the five working groups. There have been continuous meetings which our officers have attended. They have been part of consultations. Not just the Indian official contribution, there have been a number of Indian enterprises, members of civil society who have been part of the deliberations and even they are here in station F and at other locations and in many of the side events they are very prominent. And there has been a fairly wide acceptance of some of the views that Indian technical experts have been expressing including on aspects of how some of this regulation can take place and how this can function as digital public Indian technical experts as well. So, the participation from Indian academia, Indian technical experts, other stakeholders and private sector including a large number of start-ups has been quite remarkable. Some of them have also been displaying some of their innovations in the Grand Palais, the venue of the event. So, I think in terms of contribution it has been extremely significant.
Aur jahaan tak aapka sawaal hain, cyber suraksha aur deepfake ka. To aaj iske baare mein apne bhaashan mein maananiya Pradhan Mantri ji ne bhi zikr kiya tha ki yeh bahut ahem baatein hain, jinpar gaur kiya jaana chahiye. Aur ispar kuch thos action karna chahiye.
Jahaan tak Bharat ka sawaal hain, hamaare kanoon me abhi deepfakes aur misrepresentation ko tackle karne ke liye kaafi pravadhaan bane huye hain. Aap jaante hain IT Act me bhi aur Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, BNS me bhi iske pravadhaan hain. Aur iske antargat law enforcement agencies, police, baaki agencies aksar ispar action leti hain, karyavahi karti hain.
Kaafi saare desho se humse yeh bhi pucha gaya hain ki aise pravadhaan aapke kanoon me hain. Humare yaha aise pravadhaan nahi hain. Iske liye kya kiya ja sakta hain. Aur main ye bhi batana chahta hoon ki hum iss mamle me puri tarah samvidhan ke antargat karwahi karte hain. Article 19 ki clause 2 hain, uske antargat free speech pe kuch restrictions lagaye ja sakte hain, lawful restrictions lagaye ja sakte hain. Usi ke antargat hum ye karwahi karte hain. Aur Indian IT Act me bhi iska us se bhi restricted jo provisions hain, unke antargat hum ye action karte hain. Yeh jo hain, kanooni taur par aur humare Bharat ke nayalaya me bhi High Court aur Supreme Court tak iska questioning hua hain aur ye constitutional maana gaya hain. Atah, iska matlab India me jo hain, ye bahut hi accha prabhav laa raha hain. Aur hum ye bhi paate hain aajkal ki bade bade social media entities jald se jald isko maan jaate hain. Pehle time lagta tha jab ki ek order pass hua ya kuch deepfake ya misrepresentation hain, usko hatane me thodi der lagti thi. Lekin aajkal hum paate hain ki ek do ghante ke andar wo turant action lete hain aur usme koi dikkat nahi aa rahi hain, aur voluntary cooperation bhi kaafi badh chuka hain. Aur agar aisi koi sambhavana humare dhyan me aati hain to turant unko bataya jata hain aur kaafi baar wo apne aap act kar dete hain, jo official order ka bhi intezar nahi karte hain. So, ye pravadhaan abhi bana hua hain. Aur mere khayal se ye kaafi acchi tarah chal raha hain.
Deepfake ke antargat ek hi vishaya hain ki technology aur acchi acchi hote ja rahi hain toh detection me thoda delay hota hain. Toh hum ye chahenge ke jitna jaldi ho sake, wo technology aur accha technology apna kar usko detect karne me humko suvidha ho. Yeh jyada jaruri hain aur ispe hum aajkal kaam kar rahe hain.
[Answer in Hindi: Approximate Translation] As far as your question regarding cyber security and deepfake is concerned, the Honorable Prime Minister also mentioned in his speech today that these are very important issues that need to be addressed. Concrete steps should be taken in this regard.
As for India, our laws already have several provisions to tackle deepfakes and misrepresentation. You are aware that there are provisions for this in the IT Act as well as in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Under these laws, law enforcement agencies, police, and other authorities frequently take action and carry out necessary proceedings.
Several countries have also asked us whether such provisions exist in our laws, as they do not have similar provisions. What can be done about this? I would also like to mention that we take action in this matter entirely within the framework of the Constitution. Article 19, Clause 2, allows for certain lawful restrictions on free speech, and we operate within those limits. Additionally, under the Indian IT Act, there are even more specific restricted provisions under which we take action.
Legally, this issue has been questioned up to the High Court and Supreme Court in India, and it has been upheld as constitutional. As a result, this framework is having a very positive impact in India. We also observe that major social media entities nowadays comply with these measures much more quickly. Earlier, when an order was passed to remove a deepfake or misrepresentation, it used to take some time. However, now we see that action is taken within one or two hours, and there are no difficulties in this process. Voluntary cooperation has also increased significantly.
If any such potential issue comes to our attention, we immediately inform the concerned parties, and in many cases, they take action on their own without even waiting for an official order. So, this framework is already in place, and in my opinion, it is functioning quite effectively.
The main issue with deepfake is that technology is continuously improving, which causes some delay in detection. Therefore, we would like to adopt the best possible technology as soon as possible to make detection easier for us. This is highly important, and we are currently working on it. Thank you.
Brijmohan Singh Raghuvanshi, Saadhana Group: Sir, namaskar. Main Brijmohan Singh Raghuvanshi hoon, Saadhana Samooh se. Mere do prashna hain. Pichle varsh aadarniya Pradhan Mantri ji Europe ke daure par jab the, G7 Summit me unhone apni upasthiti darj karai thi. Doosra, abhi hum is baar dekh rahe hain ki Europe par khaas taur se aadarniya Pradhan Mantri ji ko aisa lagraha hain ki bahut jyada focus kar rahe hain. Hum yeh jaana chahenge ki aakhirkar Europe ko isse pehle bhi jo Pradhan Mantri log the, voh khas taur se unka dhyan vishv mein do teen desho par adharit aur kendrit rahete the. Lekin ab Europe pe aur poore vishwa par Pradhan Mantri ji ka ek focus hain.
Mera doosra prashna hain. Aapne AI Summit ki baat aapne ki, toh jab AI Summit is baar desh me hoga, to vartamaan me jitne pratinidhi usme shamil ho rahe hain, kya unke alawa bhi kuch anya desh isme shamil honge? Ya phir AI Summit me wahi desh shamil honge jo Paris me hone wale AI Summit me shamil ho rahe hain?
[Question in Hindi: Approximate Translation] Sir, greetings. I am Brijmohan Singh Raghuvanshi from Saadhana Samooh. I have two questions. Last year, when the Honorable Prime Minister was on a tour of Europe, he marked his presence at the G7 Summit. Secondly, this time, we are seeing that the Honorable Prime Minister is placing significant focus on Europe. We would like to know ... as previous Prime Ministers were primarily focused on just a few countries. However, now we observe that the Prime Minister has a special focus on Europe and the entire world.
My second question is related to the AI Summit. You mentioned the AI Summit—when it takes place in our country this time, will there be any additional countries participating apart from the current representatives? Or will only those countries be part of the AI Summit that are participating in the AI Summit in Paris?
Rajendra, All India Radio: Sir this is Rajendra from All India Radio. The U.S. Vice President in the summit, in his address, has mentioned that excessive regulation will kill this transformative industry. How are we going to balance between these regulations and innovation? And my second question is about the job losses on Artificial Intelligence. The Prime Minister also talked about it and he also mentioned we have to do the skilling and re-skilling. How are we going to mitigate the effects of Artificial Intelligence?
Tapas Bhattacharya, Doordarshan: Hi Sir, Tapas Bhattacharya from Doordarshan. Just wanted to check with you the digital infrastructure you mentioned. Is there any, in this particular Summit, any talk about, from the French side as well as from the Indian side, about collaboration on the digital infrastructure? Because when we spoke to French Minister ... Foreign Affairs Minister, he said that they are looking at that. So, could you share if there is any talk on that?
Shri Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary, India: Dekhiye, Brijmohan ji, aapka jo sawal hain, main agar thik tarah se samajh paya hoon ki Europe par Pradhan Mantri ji ka focus hain aur aapka tatparya yeh hain kehna ka ki pehle nahi raha hain, shayad.
[Answer in Hindi: Approximate Translation] Look, Brijmohan ji, if I have understood your question correctly, you are saying that the Prime Minister's focus is on Europe, and you mean to say that perhaps this focus was not there earlier.
Shri Vikram Misri, Foreign Secretary, India: Nahi, main dusre Pradhan Mantriyo ka baat na karte huwe, magar abhi jo jis focus ki aap baat kar rahe hain, mere vichar me wo focus sahi hain. Kyunki Europe ke jo desh hain, aap agar European Union le le to wo ek bahut badi ek aarthik entity hain, lekin individually bhi agar aap dekhein to kai aise desh hain jo aarthik star pe bahut hi mahatvapurn desh hain humare liye.
Agar EU ko poori tarah se le liya jaye toh chahe wo vyaapaar ho, chahe takniki sahayog ho, chahe jo people-to-people relationship hain hum logon ke beech me ya development cooperation pe jo karyakram ban rahe hain, in sabhi drishtikonon se ye bahut hi ek mahatvapurna sambandh hain. Aur ye sahi hain ki humari aur se in sambandhon pe dhyan diya ja raha hain.
Toh Pradhan Mantri ji ke liye toh iska ek prathamikta ke roop me ubharna mere vichar me. this is an obvious thing for such an important relationship, or sets of relationships. There would be this kind of focus from the government. Aur ye aage bhi chalta rahega mere vichar me.
[Answer in Hindi: Approximate Translation] No, without talking about other Prime Ministers, I believe the focus you are referring to is indeed justified. Because if you look at the countries in Europe, the European Union itself is a major economic entity, but even individually, there are several countries that are highly significant for us in economic terms.
If we consider the EU as a whole, whether it is trade, technological cooperation, people-to-people relationships between our nations, or the development cooperation programs being established, from all these perspectives, this is a very important relationship. And it is true that we are paying attention to these relations from our side.
So, for the Prime Minister, its emergence as a priority is, in my view, an obvious thing for such an important relationship. And for sets of relationships, there would naturally be this kind of focus from the government. And I believe this will continue in the future as well.
Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary MeitY: Thank you.
Jahaan tak India me jo hone wali AI Summit hain, pichle baar jab GPAI Summit bhi hua tha India me, humne baaki desho se bhi logon ko invite kiya tha. Yaha pe Paris me jo abhi ye Summit hua hain, isme mera understanding hain ki kareeb kareeb 80 desh aur international organizations, matlab UN ke kaafi organizations bhi—ITU, UNESCO, UN wagairah bhi—wo bhi aaye huye the. Yaha pe upastit the.
Is hisaab se hum Videsh Mantralaya ke saath kaam karte huye anya desho ko bhi isme hum aamantrit karenge. Zaroor Global South ke desho ko pramukhta di jayegi. Asia, Africa aur Latin America—ye tino kshetron se hum zyada desho ki upasthiti tay karane ki poori koshish karenge. Humari taraf se toh yehi koshish rahegi aur Videsh Mantralaya ke saath ispar hum jude rahenge.
[Answer in Hindi: Approximate Translation] As far as the AI Summit to be held in India is concerned, last time when the GPAI Summit was also held in India, we had invited representatives from other countries as well. Here in Paris, the recently concluded Summit, as per my understanding, had around 80 countries and international organizations, including several UN organizations, ITU, UNESCO and others, in attendance.
Based on this, we will work with the Ministry of External Affairs to invite other countries as well. Priority will certainly be given to the Global South countries. We will make every effort to ensure greater participation from countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Our endeavor will be to achieve this, and we will continue to coordinate with the Ministry of External Affairs on this matter.
There was a question on regulation and innovation. As far as India is concerned, our focus has been very clear. We have said the focus has to be primarily on innovation and regulation currently is secondary. We believe that as far as AI regulation is concerned, certain aspects of it are already addressed under existing laws. I just mentioned about things like deepfakes. Existing law is sufficient to address deepfake and misrepresentation. Likewise, if you take the issue of copyrights, there is existing law and the matter is also subjudice. So, in some sense, the legal framework is addressing the issue.
There is also the question of how personal data can be used. That is being addressed through the Digital Personal Data Privacy Protection Act. DPDP Act is addressing that particular issue. So, we believe that under existing, various existing laws, we have addressed most of the current issues on regulation of AI.
So, the focus from our side needs to be much more on innovation because we believe that benefits for a country like India are tremendous from AI. We also believe that unlike in many western countries, because we do not have as many white collar jobs, we stand to lose less. Whereas there could be opportunities for employment. In some ways, it could be similar to what the Y2K movement was for the Indian software industry. And we can employ a large number of our human resources because we have a large STEM human resource base and the Stanford AI index holds that we are very high in terms of AI preparedness for talent.
So we believe there is actually an opportunity for India's talent to help various other countries in the world also navigate this AI space and develop AI-based applications for their own economies. So, to that extent, I think both the regulation and innovation aspect and the job loss aspect is sort of something we believe is more an opportunity in India's case than a risk. It of course is very crucial that we have to get it done, or that the skilling and the retraining happens whereas wherever it is necessary, and with that we should be able to achieve these goals.
The last question is on DPI collaboration specifically with France. We have been very open to DPI collaborations across the world, and we believe that the DPIs that India offers are relevant not just for the developing world of the Global South but can be applied even in developed countries. In fact, equivalent of UPI is something that we have offered even the European Union when they are developing their wallet and so on. There are applications we have developed in India including UPI and DigiLocker and so on which can be very useful even in the European context. So, we would be engaging with France as well in further discussions on this. Of course, either the Foreign Secretary or the Ambassador can throw further light on any specific bilateral matter there.
Shri Randhir Jaiswal, Official Spokesperson: Thank you, Sir. With that we come to the closure of this press briefing. See you ladies and gentlemen in Marseille tomorrow. Thank you.
Paris
February 11, 2025
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