OpenAI introduces IndQA, designed to evaluate AI systems on Indian culture, languages
Bengaluru (PTI): OpenAI on Tuesday introduced IndQA, a benchmark dataset designed to measure how well AI models understand and reason about questions on Indian culture, languages and context.
IndQA evaluates knowledge and reasoning about Indian culture and everyday life in Indian languages, it said.
According to OpenAI, IndQA includes 2,278 questions across 12 languages and 10 cultural domains, created in partnership with 261 domain experts from across India.
Unlike traditional benchmarks, IndQA's questions are natively written, not translated, reflecting the nuances of how people in India actually think, speak, and ask questions, it said.
"At OpenAI, we believe AI should be useful for all of humanity. That means AI must understand local cultures, languages, histories and contexts -- not just the Western world. India is a country of immense diversity, with many languages, traditions, and cultural nuances. For AI to be truly valuable here, it must understand that richness," Srinivas Narayanan, CTO, B2B Applications, OpenAI told reporters here.
Announcing the launch of IndQA, Narayanan said, it has been created with a curated dataset that captures India's cultural and historical context.
"This dataset helps our models understand Indian nuances more deeply. The experts also provide evaluation rubrics, so we can measure how well the AI performs on culturally grounded questions. Our goal is to take this as a playbook and use it in other countries too. We have been working with India in this way," he said.
Narayanan added that IndQA also underscores OpenAI's growing commitment to the Indian ecosystem, where local developers, educators, and creators are shaping how AI is being adopted and built for the world.
According to OpenAI, IndQA covers a broad range of culturally relevant topics, such as architecture and design, arts and culture, everyday life, food and cuisine, history, law and ethics, literature and linguistics, media and entertainment, religion and spirituality, and sports and recreation--with items written natively in Bengali, English, Hindi, Hinglish, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and Punjabi.
Each datapoint includes a culturally grounded prompt in an Indian language, an English translation for auditability, rubric criteria for grading, and an ideal answer that reflects expert expectations, it added.
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1,600 Indians travel to India on 5 Qatar Airways flights amid airspace curbs
Doha (PTI): Around 1,600 Indian nationals travelled to India on five Qatar Airways flights on Tuesday, even as the airline continues to operate limited services due to restrictions on Qatar's airspace, the Indian Embassy here said.
The flights included two services to Delhi and one each to Mumbai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, the embassy said in a social media post.
"In total, about 1600 Indian nationals travelled on Qatar Airways flights today," it said.
The mission noted that Qatar's airspace remains largely closed and Qatar Airways is currently operating only limited, non-scheduled flights.
The airline has announced services to nine Indian destinations starting Wednesday, and passengers can make bookings through the Qatar Airways website, mobile application or authorised travel agents.
The embassy said it continues to facilitate temporary Saudi transit visas for stranded Indian nationals wishing to travel to India via Saudi Arabia by crossing the Salwa land border.
The mission will remain open on all days in the coming week to provide consular services, including issuance of passports, while its control room and helplines through phone, email and WhatsApp will continue to function on a 24/7 basis.
It urged the Indian community to follow instructions issued by Qatari authorities and exercise responsibility in sharing information to help maintain public safety and community stability.
The embassy and Indian community organisations have also collaborated to support members of the Indian fishermen community in Qatar by providing dry rations to those in need.
Tensions in West Asia continue to escalate following the US-Israel strikes on Iran since February 28.
