TCS Plans To Build Its Own ChatGPT Like Generative AI Tech For Enterprise Code Generation

Indian multination IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is creating its own ChatGPT-like tool for enterprise code generation, according to the company's chief operating officer (COO) N Ganapathy Subramaniam.

The largest software services firm in the country is reportedly planning to utilise its vast internal code, data and resources for the project.

The project is in the early stages and will use in-house algorithms that employ large language modeling functions, similar to generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, but for generating enterprise code.

According to Subramaniam, Generative AI leverages past code, data and experience to learn.

“And over the many years that TCS has been in business, I can use all of my knowledge as a base. So, if that technology uses and generates code that I have taught the algorithm using TCS proprietary data, then the outcome is something that I am willing to license," Subramaniam was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.

According to him, TCS is working on use cases to build proprietary generative AI algorithms to build the code and the process has to mature further.

The TCS COO believes that enterprise usage of AGI solutions need further finetuning in terms of ownership and IP of the end products, hence enterprise solutions will see demand.

Subramaniam expects TCS to release some of these solutions before May next year, when he is set to retire from the firm.

The focus is on building and using the models, and generating code for deployment, according to him.

He said if TCS wants to provide secure and contextual generative AI solutions to accelerate client projects, it cannot depend only on multiple large language tools from different providers but should have its own solution.

Subramaniam explained that while clients are eager to utilise generative AI, as a supplier, the firm must deliver something which is infringement-free and fully-owned intellectual property.

Full potential of technology in industry can only be achieved once the regulations governing the solutions mature, he said.

Subramaniam sees a huge opportunity in creating new roles for “prompt engineers” within the organisation who can effectively communicate contextual queries to large language models for enterprise requirements.

“So, one of the things that we are hearing in the market is that the way you prompt the questions to generative AI platforms is very important, right? So, we are conceptualising a role called ‘prompt engineers’ within the organisation,” he said.

“We are yet to get approval on it, but we know that this role will be as critical as having engineering, mathematical or analytical skills," the TCS COO added.

TCS sees an opportunity to integrate its generative AI offering with its low-code software development platform MasterCraft.

This will be similar to Copilot – a solution to auto-generate code, launched by Microsoft-owned GitHub and OpenAI in October 2021, to help write software programs faster.

Subramaniam said that over 100 clients are utilising the Mastercraft tool currently.

“We have not put ChatGPT-like solutions for data pattern intelligence into it. But when we do eventually, our vision for MasterCraft to be a (intelligent) low-code platform will come true," he said.

He said TCS has already built a number of internal use cases using generative AI solutions while also working with global partners.