At Google, our goal has always been to improve the lives of as many people as possible through technology. Every time people use technology to solve a real problem — from finding an answer for any question, to screening for disease from the sound of a cough — we take another step towards what we set out to achieve. AI is making it possible to solve problems for people, economies, science and society faster than ever, but those solutions are only possible if everyone, everywhere, has access to these tools.

As leaders gather this week for the AI Impact Summit in India, we’re announcing new partnerships and programs to accelerate progress globally, by building new infrastructure, expanding connectivity and access, empowering governments, advancing science, helping people learn new skills and building useful and safe products for everyone.

Investing in infrastructure, science and government capacity

This work starts with a strong foundation. We recently announced a $15 billion investment to establish foundational AI infrastructure in India, and have been building subsea cables in the Pacific, Africa and around the world. Today we are announcing the America-India Connect initiative, which will deliver new strategic fiber-optic routes to increase the reach, reliability and resilience of digital connectivity between the U.S., India and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere.

To take advantage of the opportunities this infrastructure creates, we must also invest in people and the organizations working to solve critical challenges. Governments and public sector organizations are in a unique position to shape AI’s trajectory. While new data shows 74% of public servants globally are already using AI, only 18% believe their governments are using it effectively. To help bridge this gap, we’re announcing several new initiatives:

Creating opportunity and capacity to solve problems with AI skills

Equipping people and civil servants with AI skills empowers them to use AI tools to solve problems at their job or for their community. This is an important piece of realizing AI’s potential for economic growth and innovation globally. We have trained over 100 million people on digital skills globally, and now we are announcing some of our most ambitious skilling programs to date:

• An AI Professional Certificate program to help people all over the world learn how to use AI at work, in partnership with government bodies, education institutions and employers. This includes scholarships through nonprofits to broaden reach. In India, we’re partnering with Wadhwani AI to bring this program to students and early career professionals.
• A landmark partnership with Karmayogi Bharat to accelerate Mission Karmayogi’s vision of building a future-ready civil service. Google Cloud provides the secure and resilient infrastructure for the iGOT Karmayogi platform that supports over 20 million public servants across 800+ districts. By digitizing and structuring legacy training repositories into searchable knowledge assets, and progressively enabling content in 18+ Indian languages, the partnership advances professional development and empowers officials to learn in their preferred language.

This builds on our efforts around the world partnering with governments to equip public officials, from providing AI tools to public officers in Malaysia to an AI Skilling Blueprint in Africa.

Building helpful products for everyone

We want to build AI that is helpful in people’s daily lives by breaking down barriers and making knowledge more accessible for everyone. We are making our tools more inclusive and secure through several key updates:

• Reducing language barriers: Our new live speech-to-speech translation model erases language barriers by enabling real-time translated conversations in over 70 languages, including 10 Indic languages like Bengali, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. And we’re helping people learn new languages with AI-powered speaking and listening practice, tailored to each person’s level and ability.
• Smarter search: In the coming weeks we’re enhancing the model that powers Search Live, our real-time voice and camera tool, so more people can ask questions about what they see in their own language, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese and more. We’re also testing ways to make it easier to get helpful information from visual search even when the images aren’t clear. Lens will detect blurry images and ask follow-up questions to improve accuracy of results.
• Personalized learning: For students in India, we recently added new self-study features and JEE Main practice tests to the Gemini app (also coming soon to AI Mode in Search), transforming how they can prepare for exams with tailored help. Both Gemini and AI Mode are growing rapidly across the globe, and India is among our top 3 countries for each.
• Investing in safeguards to protect people online: Since launching in November, our SynthID verification feature in Gemini App has been used over 20 million times in a range of languages, helping people identify Google AI-generated images, video and audio. And in Circle to Search and Lens, we’re now able to identify scam messages, helping millions of people avoid fraud. We’ve also released our latest Responsible AI progress report to share more about our bold and responsible approach to AI development and implementation.

Realizing the promise of AI requires working together. At Google, we’re committed to bringing the extraordinary within reach, for everyone.