Homegrown Ola’s much-hyped AI model, Krutrim, has once again come under the scanner for messing up its origins, sparking fresh concerns about the company’s approach to AI development. The incident follows a similar controversy last year, raising questions about the true nature of Krutrim’s underlying technology, but comes at a time when the race is on to one-up the U.S. after China’s DeepSeek went viral.
Controversy began—once again—when Chirag Gupta, AVP of Product at CarWale, highlighted Krutrim’s inaccurate responses on LinkedIn. In a post, Gupta shared instances where Krutrim not only attributed its maker as OpenAI but also flagged the mention of “OpenAI” as a terms of use violation, thereafter.
Gupta’s post triggered a flurry of responses leading to online debate about where India stands on AI at the time of writing, at a time when the Government is pushing for domestic AI chatbot through a new initiative, flagged off by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recently. In the Union Budget 2025 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today, the government announced the setting up of a dedicated Centre of Excellence for AI in education with Rs 500 Crore overlay.
This isn’t the first time Krutrim has faced such allegations. Shortly after its launch last year, similar issues surfaced, forcing Ola to acknowledge inaccuracies in the AI’s responses. At that time, Krutrim attributed the errors to a “data leakage issue” from an open-source dataset used in the model’s fine-tuning. The company, via its official X (formerly Twitter) handle, thanked users for pointing out the issues and promised improvements.
Gupta’s posts suggest that the model might be relying heavily on keyword blacklisting to avoid mentioning OpenAI, rather than possessing genuine understanding.
Meanwhile, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has been actively promoting Krutrim and its capabilities. He recently announced the deployment of DeepSeek models on Krutrim’s cloud platform, hosted on Indian servers, claiming the “lowest pricing in the world.” Aggarwal has emphasized the importance of India’s participation in the AI race and positioned Krutrim as a key player.
