On Monday, a partnership with DigiLocker was announced by Google. It was announced in the Google for India 2022 event. DigiLocker is a government authorised identification storage system that brings government issued ID to the local storage of Android devices. This partnership is a part of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) which involves on-device processing of images and texts that help to identify important documents and organise them in ‘Files’- the local storage folder. The Android operating system of Google will also tap into the DigiLocker application programming interface (API).
Government issued and authorised verification documents will be stored locally on the smartphone itself. The President and chief executive of National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Abhishek Singh said that the developed application by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) now has equal authority as that of an official document and DigiLocker will be available on Android devices as a pre-installed service by default “very soon”.
Google also mentioned that the AI identification system that it has will make use of AI processing capabilities which is locally located on each device and will not expose any sensitive document on the Internet. Identification of government issued documents such as PAN card to Aadhaar card will be identified by the AI system locally. Also, a pattern lock will be provided to secure storage of the identification documents locally.
A few other initiatives were also announced by Google in this event. The Chief Executive Officer of Google, Sundar Pichai, in a conversation with Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India has offered references for a host of technological tools built by Google. Pichai said, “UPI is one of the biggest examples that I cite in terms of a successful digital tool, thanks to our learning with Google Pay. Outside this, we have seen the use of an AI tool to use in flood forecasting that we have developed here, and are starting to use gradually around the world beginning with Bangladesh.”
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