By Munsif Vengattil
NEW DELHI, Feb 18 (Reuters) – An Indian university has been asked to vacate its stall at the country’s flagship AI summit after a staff member was caught presenting a commercially available robotic dog made in China as its own creation, two government sources said.
“You need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University,” Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told state-run broadcaster DD News this week in remarks that have since gone viral.
But social media users quickly identified the robot as the Unitree Go2, sold by China’s Unitree Robotics for about $2,800 and widely used in research and education globally.
The episode has drawn sharp criticism and has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on India’s artificial intelligence ambitions.
The embarrassment was amplified by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his official social media account before the backlash. The post was later deleted.
Both Galgotias and Singh have subsequently said the robot was not a university creation and the university had never claimed otherwise.
The stall remained open to visitors as of Wednesday morning with university officials fielding questions from media about accusations of plagiarism and misrepresentation.
Galgotias has yet to receive any communication about being kicked out from the event, a representative at the booth said.
The India AI Impact summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, which runs until Saturday, has been billed as the first major AI gathering hosted in the Global South. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei will address the gathering on Thursday.
The event has also faced broader organisational difficulties since opening, with delegates reporting overcrowding and logistical issues.
That said, there has been more than $100 billion of investment in India AI projects pledged during the summit, including investments from the Adani Group conglomerate, tech giant Microsoft and data centre firm Yotta.
India’s biggest opposition party, Congress, was amongst those expressing outrage.
“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally with regard to AI,” it said on social media, citing the robot incident.
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in New Delhi; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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