Advancing Open Source AI in India: Recommendations for Governments and Technology Developers

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems get increasingly sewn into the fabric of our governance systems, India finds itself at a turning point in setting standards for the development, adoption, and governance of AI. With a wide range of public and private services, from healthcare to education and welfare delivery, now being influenced by AI systems, questions of transparency, affordability, inclusion, and accountability are becoming increasingly pertinent. Who builds and funds AI systems? On what terms are they shared or adapted? What forms of access and oversight are made possible, or foreclosed, by the way AI is designed and released?

Against the backdrop of these critical questions, this brief positions open source AI as a strategic policy option within India’s evolving AI ecosystem. It unpacks the critical importance of openness for India’s digital future, crystallising the key immediate and long-term opportunities for innovation, competition, and public value creation it offers to governments and developers alike. In doing so, it also explores the very meaning of “openness” in the context of AI, moving away from a binary framing to examine how varying degrees of openness across data, code, and model weights shape possibilities for innovation, adaptability, and public oversight.

At the same time, the brief also recognises the barriers and risks that accompany an open source approach, particularly within India’s institutional and regulatory realities, framing the friction between opportunities and risks as trade-offs that policymakers and developers must navigate. Building on this analysis, it presents concrete, actionable recommendations, outlining key policy levers for governments as well as practical steps for AI practitioners navigating complex questions around implementing open source AI. Both the analysis and the recommendations in this brief have been informed by and validated through a series of stakeholder interviews and workshops with government officials, developers, civic-tech organisations, and academic institutions.

The brief has been jointly published by Digital Futures Lab (DFL), the FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All initiative (implemented by GIZ and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)), NASSCOM, & the IndiaAI Mission.