The Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and its Just AI – Data & Algorithms for Communities initiative actively participated in the India AI Impact Summit 2026, advancing a strong people-centric and Global South perspective on AI governance, safety, and digital public infrastructure. Across multiple high-level engagements, DEF ensured that community voices, grassroots realities, and rights-based frameworks remained central to conversations shaping the future of AI.
DEF led the session Data, People, and Pre-Empting Mass Exclusion: Building Ethical AI as Digital Public Infrastructure in partnership with Globethics, AI Safety Connect, and UNESCO’s Women for Ethical AI South Asia Chapter, emphasizing safeguards against exclusion in AI-enabled public systems. DEF also contributed to AI Commons for the Global South: Data, Models & Compute for Half of Humanity (with Factly and Meta), underscoring equitable access to AI resources for developing regions.
At the PAIRS Symposium—co-led by Connected by Data and Aapti Institute with a broad consortium of researchers and practitioners, DEF presented community-centric models of participatory AI, demonstrating how civil society and local communities can meaningfully shape AI design, deployment, and accountability. DEF further participated in UNESCO’s panel on Widening Civic Participation in AI Governance: Perspectives from Global Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Academic Network on AI Ethics and Policy, reinforcing inclusive, multi-stakeholder governance approaches.
DEF also convened dialogues alongside the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) and the Global Network Initiative (GNI) on Reinforcements & Learning: Multistakeholder Convening on AI Governance, strengthening cross-sector collaboration on responsible AI policy, accountability frameworks, and global coordination.
In addition, DEF hosted an evening showcase featuring ChakraView: AI’s Loss of Human Loop, curated by Osama Manzar, as part of the Museum of Digital Society, strengthening reflection on human oversight, ethics, and the societal implications of automated systems.
Throughout all DEF’s engagements during the Summit, the Just AI vision was amplified with a focus on how the global AI ecosystem must centre citizens and communities at the design level, not as an afterthought, but as the foundation of trustworthy, inclusive, and accountable AI systems.