DW News · Feb 16, 2026 · Collected from RSS
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate the event, with world leaders and tech CEOs in attendance.
New Delhi is set to host a five-day global artificial intelligence summit starting Monday to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the technology, amid rising concerns of job security and child safety. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting the summit that kicks off on Monday afternoon. The annual summit will be the fourth of its kind, with previous meetings being held in France, South Korea and the UK. This is the first time it is being hosted by a developing country. India has quickly climbed the ranks of AI competitiveness as calculated by Stanford University researchers, landing in the third place last year behind the US and China. France's Macron and OpenAI's Altman to attend The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is expected to host over 250,000 visitors with 20 national leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and 45 ministerial-level delegations planning to attend. The guest list also includes tech CEOs Sam Altman of OpenAI and Google's Sunder Pichai. "The summit will shape a shared vision for AI that truly serves the many, not just the few," India's IT ministry has said. Over a dozen national leaders are expected to attend the summitImage: Arun Sankar/AFP Modi took to X on Monday ahead of the summit to say: "The AI Impact Summit will enrich global discourse on diverse aspects of AI, such as innovation, collaboration, responsible use and more." "From digital public infrastructure to a vibrant StartUp ecosystem and cutting-edge research, our strides in AI reflect both ambition and responsibility," he added.Focus on AI risks at Delhi summit The meeting in New Delhi comes amid growing safety concerns over AI-generated misinformation, disinformation and deepfakes. Just last month, Elon Musk's AI tool Grok saw global backlash over generation of sexualized images of real people using simple text prompts. Most of the images generated were of women, some of children. In November, India released AI Governance Guidelines with core principles of "trust," "safety," "equity" and "innovation over restraint." However, in January, the government tightened AI rules for social media platforms, which are now required to clearly label what the government calls "synthetically generated information. This week's summit is being held under the slogan of "people, progress, planet," but some critics are skeptical of what can be achieved. Industry commitments made at previous events "have largely been narrow 'self regulatory' frameworks that position AI companies to continue to grade their own homework", said Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute. Kak, who is attending the summit, said he doubts if the leaders would take any meaningful steps to hold AI giants accountable. Generative AI videos: Can you tell real from fake?To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Edited by: Alex Berry