India tells university to leave AI summit after presenting Chinese robot as its own

NEW DELHI: An Indian university has been asked to vacate its stall at the country’s flagship artificial intelligence (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 AshwiniVaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his official social media account before the backlash. The post was later deleted.

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.

‘Truly embarrassing’: The silver mechanical dog — a model sold by Chinese startup Unitree —appeared at a booth run by the private Galgotias University at this week’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.

Following online uproar over the professor’s claim in a televised interview, Galgotias said that while it did not build the machine, “what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies”.

“You need to meet Orion,” the professor told an Indian TV reporter as the dog performed tricks such as waving at the camera and springing up on its hind legs.

“This has been developed by the centres of excellence at the Galgotias University,” she said, touting the institution’s investments in artificial intelligence technology.

“As you can see, it can take all shapes and sizes… it’s quite naughty also,” she said.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, the university said: “Let us be clear — Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed.”

The “recently acquired” Unitreerobodog is a “classroom in motion” and “our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits”, it said.

India’s Congress opposition party used the incident to attack Prime Minister NarendraModi, who is hosting nearly 20 world leaders and dozens more national delegations at the five-day summit.

“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally, with regard to AI. In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” the party wrote in a post on X.

“This is truly embarrassing for India,” it added, calling the incident “brazenly shameless”.

The TV reporter who had conducted the interview, Tapas Bhattachary, urged viewers to take a broader perspective.

“If one out of hundreds of exhibitors wasn’t being upfront about their innovation, I would not give up on the entire India’s youth who are very innovative,” Bhattachary said. Monitoring Desk