Recent Current Affairs related to AI

Flying Wedge Defence & Aerospace Technologies Pvt Ltd (FWDA), an Indian defence startup, has unveiled the “FWD Supreme Lite”, marking the first AI-piloted fighter jet programme in India.

Designed and developed entirely in India, the fighter jet demonstrator weighs approximately 250 kg, offering an endurance of up to 30 hrs and an operational range of 3,000 km.

The aircraft is designed around the ‘Mobbing Doctrine’, a new warfare doctrine that proposes the deployment of a larger number of AI-piloted fighter aircraft.

The Territorial Army, in collaboration with CyberPeace, has launched a national-level hackathon named “Terrier Cyber Quest 2026” (TCQ 3.0).

The initiative aims to address defence, cybersecurity, and information-domain challenges by promoting indigenous solutions in Artificial Intelligence (AI), threat mitigation, and digital awareness.

Google has emerged as the successful bidder in a bankruptcy auction to acquire internal enterprise data and software assets of Spirit Airlines for $10 million.

The company intends to use these assets for product development and training AI models.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) has organised the “Yashoda AI - Women’s Path to AI Empowerment” programme at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Jalandhar, Punjab.

The initiative aims to promote AI literacy, digital empowerment, and cyber safety to ensure a secure digital environment.

The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has partnered with Cultus Education and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch a nationwide cloud and AI skilling initiative.

The program aims to provide foundational AI and cloud literacy to 1.5 lakh learners using the digital training content of AWS.

The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has launched a national-level hackathon named “Cyber Kushti 2026”. The hackathon focuses on the fields of cybersecurity and AI.

The initiative was introduced during the 3rd National Conference on Cyber Security, Digital Forensics and Intelligence (NCCDFI 2026) held at the Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi.

OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT for Teens, a specialized version featuring parental controls and enhanced security measures to address risks associated with AI chatbots.

The platform automatically activates when a user is estimated to be under 18 years of age (or self-identifies their age as between 13 and 17 years).

Bengaluru-based Razorpay, a payments technology company, has launched an AI model named “Vulcan” to improve payment success rates and detect fraudulent activities. The model has been trained on a dataset of 4 billion transactions to identify patterns and mitigate risks.

The SPIRE Lab of the IISc Bengaluru, in collaboration with the AI and Robotics Technology Park (ARTPARK) and Google, has launched an open-source speech AI model named SraVaani.

The model is capable of recognizing 65 Indian languages and dialects. It has been released under a permissive Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) licence on the Hugging Face platform.

PM Narendra Modi has inaugurated ‘Param Pragya’, an AI-enabled high-performance supercomputing facility at the Sonipat (Haryana) campus of the IIT Delhi. The inauguration took place during the 57th convocation of IIT Delhi, where he attended as the Chief Guest.

International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation and Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) Bengaluru have inaugurated the ‘IBM-MIT AI Lab-MAHE’ at the Bengaluru campus.

Additionally, IBM Corporation and CHRIST University have announced the establishment of the ‘IBM Innovation Center for AI’ to promote AI education, research, and innovation.

Indian researchers led by Dr Shubhasis Haldar have developed a deep-learning AI framework named “ACSCeND” to identify hidden cancer stem-like cells (CSCs).

The framework was developed through a collaboration between the SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences (SNBNCBS) and Ashoka University.

The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has signed a Statement of Intent (SoI) with NITI Aayog to advance multilingual, voice-first AI solutions under the 'BHASHINI for Seva/Sanchalan' initiative.

Union Minister Giriraj Singh has inaugurated the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology (CoE-HT) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

During the event, 5 flagship initiatives were launched: 'Handloom 4.0 Mobile App', 'Handloom e-Vidya', 'HandloomX', 'Kalagriha Handloom Studio' (GenZ Design Studio), and 'Threads of Valour'.

The IIT Gandhinagar in Gujarat has signed an MoU with the Indian Artificial Intelligence Research Organisation (IAIRO) to promote research, education, innovation, and talent development in the field of AI.

Alibaba has unveiled its largest and most capable AI model named "Qwen3.8-Max". The model features 2.4 trillion parameters. It is positioned behind Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, which comprises 2.8 trillion parameters.

DeepSeek has launched its 'V4-Flash model', claimed to be the most cost-effective AI model globally.

The Application Programming Interface (API) of the model is priced at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens.

The 2nd meeting of the BRICS Science Academies Forum 2026 was held at the IIT Hyderabad under the theme "Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development and Strengthening Global South Cooperation".

Additionally, India hosted the BRICS Ministers of Interior Meeting in New Delhi.

The Odisha government has signed an MoU with HCL Technologies (HCLTech) and Sarvam AI to set up the first AI data centre of the state.

The facility will be located at the Odisha Sovereign AI Park in Bhubaneswar, with a total project outlay of ₹14,257 crore.

Researchers from the NASA have proposed an AI mission concept named "Planetary Rings Autonomous EXploration with In-situ Sampling (PRAXIS)". It has been proposed under Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) 2026 program.

The mission aims to enable the first-ever direct collection and analysis of particles from Saturn's rings. It is designed to deliver direct observations of millimetre- to centimetre-sized ring particles, addressing a key priority identified in planetary science decadal surveys. The project is led by Dr. B Marco Quadrelli.