Meta Announces Support For NLSIU - IIT Bombay Research Project For India’s Consumer Grievance Redressal System Through GenAI

Meta today announced support for a National Law School of India University’s (NLSIU) research project that will assess how large language models (LLM) can be used for building public solutions for enhancing efficiency in India’s consumer grievance redressal system, part of Meta’s ongoing efforts to foster an ecosystem of responsible and open AI innovation to solve real world challenges. The project will be executed along with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), in collaboration with the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) as the knowledge partner.

The research initiative will explore the feasibility of leveraging Llama 2, Meta’s openly available large language model, in creating and evaluating a proof of concept of a citizen centric chatbot and a decision-assist tool in the area of consumer law. With the goal of enhancing efficiency, the chatbot will be designed to guide consumers on the procedural aspects of drafting a complaint and answering questions relating to consumer law in India. The decision assist tool in this research also will be designed to support searching case laws and summarisation of documents to provide assistance to judicial authorities in the area of consumer affairs. The research project will explore how LLMs can assist consumers or judicial authorities in the context of ongoing oversight and control by human decision makers. In keeping with the commitment to responsible innovation, NLSIU and IIT Bombay will also release a white paper explaining the risk mitigation approaches implemented and how responsible design principles have been deployed at every layer of stack.

At the launch of the event Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India University said, “The National Law School of India University is committed to academic research and legal innovation using Artificial Intelligence to aid legal system reform. This project on consumer law aims to enhance awareness on consumer rights, and to provide accessible  assistance by leveraging      Llama2. With our expertise in interdisciplinary research, NLSIU is uniquely positioned to help pioneer these legal applications employing large language models. We will create a rich corpus of Indian legal resources to map the landscape of consumer disputes in the country, and use this corpus to train the Llama model. We will work to ensure that the material fed into the model is relevant, reliable, and user-friendly. Additionally, we will develop a prototype of a decision-assist tool to support efficient consumer dispute resolution. We look forward to working with Meta, IIT Bombay and the Dept. of Consumer Affairs on this exciting initiative that marks a significant step towards transformative legal reforms in India.”

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs, said, “The government is committed to creating a safe environment for consumers. The launch of the research project is a step forward in our efforts to evaluate innovation solutions using generative AI for enhancing consumer rights and awareness, underpinning our efforts on consumer protection in India. The initiative pioneered by the Department of Consumer Affairs along with NLSIU and IIT Bombay is supported by Meta, and is a significant step towards using open innovation for building applications for the benefit of consumers.”

Joel Kaplan, Vice President, Global Policy, Meta, added, “Meta has put exploratory research, open science, and collaboration with academic and industry partners at the heart of our AI efforts for over a decade. We’ve seen first-hand how open innovation can lead to technologies that benefit more people and transform sectors. We’re excited to extend our support to NLSIU for its  research initiatives building AI tools leveraging Llama 2. As more researchers, developers and startups build and experiment on our technology, the more we can learn about use cases, safe model deployment, and potential opportunities.”

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor IIT Bombay and well known Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning Expert, added “LLMs, of which Meta’s Llama 2 is a shining example, is the most exciting development in AI today with immense potential for social benefit. The trinity of domain-task-language, e.g., Law-Chabot-English or Agriculture-Sentiment-Marathi, is set to be tackled in an unprecedented way through LLMs. With our long and deep expertise in NLP, ML and LLM we are excited to work with Meta, NLSIU and DoCA on the very impactful problem of question answering and search in consumer law domain.”

Meta is an industry leader in GenAI research and is partnering to  build a robust AI ecosystem in India. Meta believes in an open approach for building AI models, and works in collaboration with others in industry, government, civil society and academia to advance them in a responsible way.

Picture Caption: (L-R) Shivnath Thukral, Director & Head of Public Policy, Meta India; Rahul Hemrajani, Assistant Professor, NLSIU; Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor, IIT Bombay; Dr. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice Chancellor of National Law School of India University (NLSIU); Joel Kaplan, VP Global Policy, Meta; Dr. Sudhanshu Kumar, Chair Professor at Chair on Consumer Law and Practice at NLSIU; Dr. Arul George Scaria, Associate Professor of Law, NLSIU; Sunil Abraham, Public Policy Director, Meta India; Prachi Bhatia, Public Policy Manager, Meta India at the launch event of the NLSIU - IIT Bombay Research Project.