The ongoing five-day AI summit in New Delhi, aggressively promoted by the Union government as the biggest business event, has been marred by controversies. Among them is the claim that Galgotias University – a private university run by the Smt Shakuntala Educational and Welfare Society in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida – has developed a robot dog named ORION (Operational Robotic Intelligence Node), which attracted the attention of the visitors at the event.
The state-owned Doordarshan News, in its enthused coverage of the event, shared a clipping of the robotic dog on X (Twitter) and its eye-grabbing feats.
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also shared a video of the event with a clip featuring the robot dog saying: “Bharat’s sovereign models are performing well on global benchmarks. Success of the sovereign stack marks a significant achievement for our engineers and innovators.”
However, in the age of AI, netizens were quick to point out that the AI-enabled machine – Unitree Go2 – was procured from China. In the face of backlash against DD News for failing to fact-check the claims made by Galgotias University, the channel quietly deleted the tweet. But the damage was done, as many, including pro-Chinese accounts, had called out the sham of the summit.
Embarrassingly, the Minister’s tweet was also flagged with a community note about the claim of the robot dog. The tweet has been now deleted.
Following outrage, Galgotias University issued a press release on the evening of Tuesday, February 17, stating that they never claimed to have built the robot dog. “...Let us be clear, Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed. But what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies right here in Bharat…”
However, contrary to the statement, in an interview with DD News, Neha Singh, a faculty member of the University, claimed that ORION was built at its Centre of Excellence.
In an interview with the ANI news agency, Dhruv Galgotia, CEO, Galgotias University, claimed that they have a Rs 350+ crore AI ecosystem, powered by advanced supercomputing infrastructure, research labs, Centres of Excellence, and student-led innovation, reflecting our commitment to shaping India's leadership in Artificial Intelligence.
Galgotias University was previously in the news in 2024 when its students marched from Greater Noida to Delhi in protest against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his proposal of wealth redistribution. However, when Aaj Tak’s reporter Ashutosh Mishra questioned the students about why they were protesting and what objections they had against the reforms proposed by Rahul Gandhi, the protesting students stumbled to answer and even failed to read the placards they were carrying.
Responding to the incident, Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda said it was an “unpardonable” act by the University.
“As someone who started off working as a Software Engineer with @Infosys more than 2 decades back, I know first hand how much ahead we were (even are) compared to China at least in IT/Tech sector. Now for Galgotia to do such a thing and bring China into focus when such an important AI summit is being held in India is quite unpardonable (sic),” he shared on X.
Aside from this controversy, the five-day AI summit turned chaotic with complaints of poor organisation. Visitors complained of lack of food and water at the event due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit. According to reports, the security detail sealed the entire venue, confining the visitors indoors for hours without food or water.
The list of prohibited items at the event, including earpods, car keys, bags, water bottles, etc., became a subject of ridicule.