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In our country, research on AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been happening for many years. As I mentioned earlier, computers were the starting point for AI. It means giving tasks that humans do to machines through logic and programming. However, we didn’t call it AI at that time.
After 1992, with the rise of computers and the internet in the 2000s, AI slowly started to grow in our country. But it wasn’t until 2022 that the term “Artificial Intelligence” was officially used. Since then, AI has become a part of almost everything. It’s going to stay this way.
To explain this, I will use my own company, ComPcare Software, as an example. Instead of talking about what others have done in our country, I will describe how AI started spreading widely in our country through my experience.
We’ve been researching AI in our company for many years. Before Windows operating systems were widely used in our country, in the 1990s, we created programs in C and C++ languages on DOS operating systems. We even made cartoons and animations. The first screen saver we created was of an elephant walking across the screen from left to right. Today, there are many software tools to create such things, but back then, creating this from scratch was special. This was one form of AI.
In the 2000s, after animation software became available, we started making cartoons, adding voices, and making them speak in multiple languages! The animation would work in whichever language we chose. We created animations like the Ramayana, Kandar Shashti Kavacham, and children’s songs. Today, we call these AI-generated content.
We were the ones who laid the foundation for this about 20 years ago. We would give input for what a drawing or cartoon should say and how it should move, and then we would write the program to make the animation. This was also a form of AI.
After that, in 2005, we worked on making books speak in the voice of the author. You might think it’s no big deal to turn a book into an audio or video file, but what we did was create a voice model of the author and used that model to make the book “speak” in their voice. This way, authors didn’t have to record each of their books separately. We created their voice model, and then we could make the books “speak” in that voice. We started this work 15 years ago, and today, AI does the same thing.
We were doing things like programming, drawing, creating animations, making pictures speak, and turning books into audio 15 years ago. The advanced research that has taken place since then is what we see as AI today.
So, research on AI has been going on for many years, even before it became popular worldwide. Slowly, AI has moved from one area to another, and now it is ready to take over more and more of our lives.
You might wonder if AI is only used in creative fields like art, books, and cartoons. But AI is spreading across all areas of life, not just the arts. Next month, I will talk about how AI is taking over different fields.
ComPcare K. Bhuvaneswari, Founder
Compcare Software, Chennai
February 12, 2025 | Wednesday
