India AI Impact Summit 2026: As India gears up for its AI Impact Summit in New Delhi next month, the government is pulling out all the stops to build consensus
on key issues pertaining to artificial intelligence (AI). Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the expo and the opening ceremony of the summit, scheduled to be held from February 15-20. Meanwhile, the government is planning to build a consensus among nations on creating common standards for AI, officials told the Economic Times. They added that currently AI standards are being formulated across 38 multilateral panels, which include multiple United Nations organs as well as global bodies. “India is already part of a large number of these discussions, and responses from all Indian participating ministries and agencies have been collated. This has together contributed to our position on developing AI standards,” an electronics and information technology ministry official told ET on condition of anonymity. Another official added, “Next month’s summit will allow stakeholders who have been discussing AI standards to comprehensively engage. More detailed, comprehensive and long term alignment on common standards and guidelines for AI is expected now that global bodies have already worked on it.”
Why India wants to build global consensus on AI standards
India believes that to fully harness AI’s power, building a robust, inclusive and globally recognised standards is the need of the hour. “These standards will not only safeguard AI's ethical deployment but also help create a level playing field for developing nations, enabling them to adopt and implement AI responsibly and effectively,” Bharat Khera, Additional Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, said last year.India seeks to work with the global community to set up an open source repository of AI use cases across healthcare, agriculture and education that can be deployed in the global south, as well as instruments to democratise AI resources including compute data algorithms, ET reported.
India AI Impact Summit 2026
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 will be the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South. It aims to boost existing multilateral initiatives while advancing new priorities, deliverables and cooperative frameworks.
The summit charts a path where the transformative power of AI serves humanity, drives inclusive growth, fosters social development, and promotes people-centric innovations that protect our planet.
It will be anchored in three ‘sutras’ or foundational principles, of People, Planet and Progress which define how AI should serve humanity, safeguard the environment, and drive inclusive economic and social growth.
