New Delhi, Feb. 5 -- Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, said on Wednesday that his statement that India should "not even try" to build its own foundational AI models was taken out of context.

Altman defended his statement in a chat with union information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw during his visit to India.

"In reference to the comment I made in India a few years ago about the cost of building foundational AI models, it was taken out of context. That was a certain time of scaling AI, and I still think that pre-trained foundational AI models are expensive. But, one of the most exciting things that have happened in the industry is that there's a lot that we've done now in distillation of AI models," Altman said. "There's a l...