Alright, let's get this straight. Tech giants are suddenly feeling generous and giving away "free" AI to millions of Indians? Give me a break. It's not charity, folks; it's a data grab, plain and simple.
So, OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity are tripping over themselves to offer free access to their AI tools in India. Why? Because India has a billion-plus potential users, dirt-cheap data, and a government that isn't (yet) breathing down their necks like China. Tarun Pathak from Counterpoint Research spells it out: "The plan is to get Indians hooked on to generative AI before asking them to pay for it." ChatGPT, Gemini: Why OpenAI, Google and Perplexity are offering free AI in India?
Hooked is right. It's like a drug dealer offering free samples. They get you addicted, and then they start charging. But in this case, the addiction isn't just to the AI itself; it's to the convenience, the "magic" of having AI at your fingertips. And what's the price of that convenience? Your data.
India's online population is young, smartphone-addicted, and hungry for the next big thing. Perfect targets. They're handing over their data like it's candy on Halloween, and these companies are gobbling it up. "India is an incredibly diverse country. The AI use cases emerging from here will serve as valuable case studies for the rest of the world," Pathak says. Translation: "We can learn how to manipulate and monetize a huge, diverse population by turning them into guinea pigs."
And let's be real, most people don't read the fine print. They don't understand what they're giving away when they click "I agree" on those terms and conditions. They just want the shiny new toy. Offcourse, who can blame them? But it's predatory, nonetheless.
Speaking of shiny new toys, have you heard about Tilly Norwood? The AI-generated actor that's supposed to be the future of entertainment? Yeah, that's going great. Apparently, the creator, Eline Van der Velden, is planning on unleashing dozens more of these digital abominations on the world. Forty, to be exact, to "build her whole universe." Creator of much-hated AI-generated actor Tilly Norwood says dozens more are in the pipeline
Mara Wilson, aka Matilda, hit the nail on the head when she asked, "And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?" Exactly! It's not just about taking jobs away from actors; it's about erasing real human experiences and replacing them with soulless simulations.
And what does this have to do with free AI in India? Well, it's the same damn principle. It's about replacing real human interaction, real human creativity, with cheap, easily-replicable AI garbage. It's about devaluing human input and replacing it with algorithms. SAG-AFTRA is rightly pissed, calling it the "replacement of human performers by synthetics."
Van der Velden brushes it off, saying it's a "creative renaissance." No, it ain't. It's a creative apocalypse.
I mean, am I the only one who sees the writing on the wall here?
Prasanto K Roy says regulation will need to increase as authorities figure out how to manage people giving away their data so freely. Good luck with that. Governments are always ten steps behind tech companies. By the time they figure out what's going on, the data's already been mined, the algorithms have been trained, and the damage is done.
They'll hold hearings, issue fines, and make a lot of noise, but it won't change anything. The AI overlords will still be in control, laughing all the way to the bank. And we'll be too busy playing with our free AI toys to notice.
