Indian university faces backlash for presenting Chinese robot as its own 

An Indian university is facing backlash after one of its professors was caught falsely presenting a Chinese-made robot dog at a major artificial intelligence summit, it has reportedly since been asked to leave, as the institution’s own.

“You ⁠need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University,” Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told Indian state-run broadcaster DD ⁠News this week.

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 AI ambitions.

The embarrassment was amplified by Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his official social media account before the backlash. The post was later deleted.

Galgotias and Singh have subsequently said the robot was not a university creation and the university had never claimed otherwise.

“Let us be clear, Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed,” it said in a post on X. “But what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies.”

The university 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 of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, a representative at the booth was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.

The Indian National Congress opposition party used the incident to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 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 posted on X.

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

The India AI Impact Summit, which runs until ⁠Saturday, has been billed as the first major AI gathering hosted in the Global South. Modi, Google CEO ⁠Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei ⁠are to address the gathering on Thursday.

The event has faced organisational difficulties since opening on Monday with delegates reporting overcrowding and logistical issues.

That said, there has been more than $100bn 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.