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| The Record: | Guinness World Records title: ‘Most pledges received for an AI responsibility campaign in 24 hours’ — 250,946 valid pledges between February 16 and 17, 2026 |
| Announced: | February 18, 2026 by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at India AI Impact Summit 2026, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. Verified on-site by Guinness World Records Adjudicator Pravin Patel. |
| Original Target: | 5,000 pledges. Final count: 2,50,946. That is a 50x overachievement — not a rounding error but a signal of genuine, coordinated mass participation at national scale. |
| Campaign Name: | AI Responsibility Pledge. Portal: aipledge.indiaai.gov.in. Launched under IndiaAI Mission in partnership with Intel India on February 16, 2026. |
| Who Participated: | Primarily students from colleges across India. Government reached out to colleges, engaged faculty, and mobilised students to commit to ethical and responsible AI use. |
| Pledge Mechanics: | Scenario-based questions on: (1) Data privacy, (2) Accountability, (3) Transparency, (4) Combating misinformation. Not a passive click — participants had to demonstrate comprehension of responsible AI principles. |
| Completion Reward: | Digital badge + access to curated AI learning pathways. The campaign doubled as a public awareness and training programme, not just a symbolic pledge drive. |
| Officials Present: | Ashwini Vaishnaw (MeitY Minister) · S Krishnan (MeitY Secretary) · Abhishek Singh (Additional Secretary MeitY, CEO IndiaAI Mission, DG NIC) · Kavita Bhatia (COO IndiaAI) · Srinivasan Iyengar (SVP & GM Central Engineering Group, Intel) |
| Summit Context: | India AI Impact Summit 2026: first international AI summit hosted in the Global South. Feb 16–20, Bharat Mandapam. Summit also saw $200B in infra interest, $17B VC funding commitments declared by Vaishnaw. |
| Official Position: | India frames this as evidence of its commitment to shaping global AI discourse with focus on inclusion, ethics, and public trust — positioning India as the voice of the Global South in international AI governance conversations. |
THE RECORD, IN FULL CONTEXT
On February 18, 2026, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw made an announcement that captured the attention of every delegate in the hall: India had just entered the Guinness World Records. The title: ‘Most pledges received for an AI responsibility campaign in 24 hours.’
The numbers were extraordinary. The AI Responsibility Pledge campaign — launched under the IndiaAI Mission in collaboration with Intel India on February 16 via the portal aipledge.indiaai.gov.in — recorded 2,50,946 valid pledges within a single 24-hour window. The government’s original target had been 5,000 pledges. India delivered exactly 50 times that number. The achievement was verified on the spot by Guinness World Records Adjudicator Pravin Patel, in the presence of senior government and industry officials.
“A special round of applause to the 250,000 students who have taken this pledge. This is truly a proud day for the country. This is the direction in which the nation must move — towards a future where AI is embraced with responsibility.” — Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology
The minister was direct about the origin of the vision: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to involve India’s youth in the responsible and ethical use of AI. It was this vision, Vaishnaw noted, that prompted the government to reach out directly to colleges, engage with faculty members, and ask students to make a personal commitment — not just to understand AI, but to use it as a tool for social good. The response was not a surprise to those who understand India’s college infrastructure: more than 1,000 higher education institutions across the country, millions of enrolled students, and a student community that is simultaneously the most AI-curious and most ethically impressionable segment of any nation’s population.
What the Pledge Actually Was — and Why ‘Symbolic’ Is the Wrong Word
It would be easy to dismiss a pledge campaign as performative — a click on a button, a digital signature, a government metric dressed up as a milestone. The AI Responsibility Pledge’s design deliberately prevented that interpretation. Participants were not asked to simply tick a box. They were required to engage with scenario-based questions that tested actual comprehension of responsible AI principles before the pledge was counted as valid.
| Pledge Pillar | What Participants Committed To | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Data Privacy | Commit to protecting personal data, not misusing AI systems that process private information, and understanding user consent in AI-powered applications. | India has 900M+ internet users whose data flows through AI systems daily. A generation that understands data privacy is harder to exploit and harder to radicalize through data-driven manipulation. |
| Accountability | Commit to taking personal responsibility for how AI tools are used, understanding that human intent drives AI outcomes, and refusing to hide behind algorithmic decisions. | The ‘the AI did it’ defense is one of the most concerning governance failures in global AI adoption. A population trained to own its AI usage cannot deflect responsibility to the machine. |
| Transparency | Commit to being honest about when AI is being used, avoiding deceptive AI applications, and supporting open disclosure of AI-generated content. | In an age of synthetic media, deepfakes, and AI-generated disinformation, transparency is the foundational social contract. India’s students committing to this at scale is a genuine governance contribution. |
| Combating Misinformation | Commit to not creating or sharing AI-generated misinformation, developing critical literacy around AI-generated content, and actively countering AI-powered falsehoods. | India faces an acute misinformation challenge, particularly on social platforms at election time and during health crises. A student population committed to countering AI misinformation is a distributed trust layer no law alone can create. |
| Completion Reward | Digital badge + access to curated AI learning pathways — converting a one-time pledge into an ongoing education journey. | The pledge is the beginning, not the end. Participants who complete it are routed into structured AI literacy content — turning a Guinness World Record campaign into a national AI education pipeline. |
Who Was in the Room When Guinness Made It Official
| Name / Title | Role in the Moment |
|---|---|
| Ashwini VaishnawUnion Minister, MeitY | Announced the record. Credited PM Modi’s vision for the initiative. Called it a milestone in citizen-led digital responsibility and India’s commitment to inclusive, ethical AI. |
| Pravin PatelGWR Adjudicator | Officially verified and announced the 2,50,946 valid pledge count. The Guinness adjudicator’s on-site presence is what makes this an official world record, not a self-reported claim. |
| S KrishnanSecretary, MeitY | Senior government official whose presence at the verification ceremony signals institutional weight and formal recognition of the campaign as a policy milestone. |
| Abhishek SinghAdditional Secretary MeitY, CEO IndiaAI Mission, DG NIC | As CEO of IndiaAI Mission — the body that organized the campaign — Singh is the operational lead behind the Guinness achievement. The IndiaAI Mission’s collaboration with Intel India to mobilize college students at scale was the execution architecture. |
| Kavita BhatiaCOO, IndiaAI | As Chief Operating Officer of IndiaAI, Bhatia was responsible for the campaign’s operational delivery — the portal infrastructure, the college outreach, the verification process. |
| Srinivasan IyengarSVP & GM Central Engineering Group, Intel | Intel India’s senior leadership representation at the verification. Intel’s partnership in this campaign is consistent with its broader responsible AI and AI for All commitments across education and government initiatives globally. |
Why This Guinness Record Is More Than a Photo Op
The Geopolitical Signal This Record Sends:
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STARTUPFEED INSIGHT
| What the 50x Overachievement Tells Us About India’s AI Appetite: When a government campaign aimed at 5,000 responses gets 2,50,946, one of two things is happening: either the mobilization was aggressive enough to produce manufactured numbers, or genuine enthusiasm exists at a scale the planners underestimated. The scenario-based question requirement — which filters out passive clickers — strongly suggests the latter. India’s colleges, particularly the engineering and management institutions, have been buzzing with AI since ChatGPT launched. The 2,50,946 figure is not a surprise to anyone who has been on an Indian college campus in the last two years. It is a surprise only to those who planned for 5,000. | |
| For India’s AI Startups: | This Guinness record is free brand infrastructure for every Indian AI startup doing responsible AI work. The government has now certified — via international verification — that 2.5 lakh+ Indians care about ethical AI and have actively educated themselves on it. That is your market. That is your customer base. That is the policy environment you are building in. Startups that build with transparency, data privacy, and accountability as design principles will find an increasingly literate and supportive user base — educated, in part, by this exact campaign. |
| For EdTech & AI Literacy Platforms: | The AI learning pathways offered to pledge completers represent a significant user acquisition opportunity. IndiaAI Mission is routing 2.5 lakh+ engaged students into AI education content. EdTech platforms with responsible AI curriculum, AI ethics courses, or applied AI skills programmes should be actively seeking IndiaAI Mission partnerships right now. This is the warm audience opportunity of 2026. |
| For International AI Policy Observers: | India’s positioning through this campaign is deliberate and strategic. By creating the world’s largest AI responsibility pledge event at the Global South’s first international AI summit, India is simultaneously: (1) demonstrating that responsible AI is not a luxury of wealthy nations, (2) building diplomatic soft power in AI governance conversations, and (3) establishing domestic political momentum for AI regulation that is human-centric rather than purely industry-driven. This is AI diplomacy at national scale. |
| StartupFeed’s Take: The most underreported element of this story is not the Guinness record itself — it is the scenario-based question design. A pledge that requires demonstrating comprehension before being validated is not a PR exercise. It is a policy instrument. 2,50,946 Indians who have actively engaged with questions about data privacy, accountability, transparency, and misinformation around AI represent a meaningfully more AI-aware population segment than one that simply clicked ‘I agree.’ The government understood this. The design was intentional. India is not just claiming to lead on responsible AI — it is building the citizen capacity to make that claim credible. | |
