Paytm founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma sees Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as being ‘ripe for innovation’ with the potential to become part of our everyday lives.

In his letter to the shareholders, Sharma said, “I see AGI as something like smartphones 10 years back – very ripe for innovation and potent to become part of everyday life at scale. As a technology company, we at Paytm, will be at the forefront of this revolution. We are committed to building a world-class technology company from India.”

Sharma added that Paytm’s technology teams had seen some ‘encouraging results’ in the AGI domain. “I believe in 2023, with the advent of early-stage AGI, we will see more opportunities to bring efficiencies in business and AI-first offerings.”

The company announced its earnings on May 5 where its consolidated quarterly losses shrank to less than a fourth from a year earlier, even as it posted strong revenue growth in its digital payments, merchant subscription, and loan-distribution businesses.

Also read | Paytm parent One97 Communications posts $1 billion in revenue for FY23

AGI demand in startups

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT — a conversational chatbot built on AGI — last year, there has been significant growth in demand for AGI and AGI-based products. Startups across the world are either integrating ChatGPT in their applications and services or using AGI to build their own products.

In March, news agency Reuters reported that US fintech major Stripe was beginning to integrate OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 artificial intelligence model into its digital payment processing and other products.

“There are currently 14 GPT-4 prototypes in the works at San Francisco-based Stripe,” Emily Sands, Stripe’s head of information, had said then.

In India, too, startups such as MakeMyTrip are exploring their options with AGI.

Speaking at the Times Network India Digital Fest, Makemytrip’s founder and chairman Deep Kalra said, “The new model of AI that we’re all aware of — generative AI. The generative model is heady, and it can summarise the reviews we’re getting intelligently in a very easy-to-understand form to help us build content in a very interesting manner. So, we are working to build those core capabilities, and will be working with the leading players for that.”

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