The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) Mumbai, has partnered with Google and YouTube to launch a national AI skilling initiative. The programme will offer 15,000 scholarships for students and young professionals in the creative sector.
According to an official statement, the initiative aims to equip learners with practical AI skills for fields such as media, entertainment, animation, gaming and digital storytelling.
The programme focuses on building practical, job-ready skills. Students will learn how to use AI tools in real creative workflows. They will also get exposure to content creation and platform practices, especially for YouTube.
According to the statement, the curriculum is designed to help learners become production-ready and apply their skills directly in professional settings.
The programme will be delivered in two phases. In Phase I, all selected participants will receive training in foundational AI concepts. This will be done through Google Career Certificates and Google Cloud’s generative AI learning paths. The focus will be on AI basics, responsible use and core understanding.
In Phase II, learners who complete the first stage will move to advanced training. This will include hands-on projects, storytelling techniques and training on Google’s AI tools. It will also cover YouTube best practices. According to the official statement, this phase will be delivered in a hybrid mode across key creative hubs.
The initiative aims to prepare students for emerging roles in the creative economy. It combines AI skills with practical applications in content and storytelling.
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IICT will lead the implementation. It will manage programme design, outreach and execution. The curriculum has been developed with Google and YouTube to align with industry needs.
The programme builds on the ‘Create with AI’ initiative launched earlier by IICT and YouTube. According to the statement, the new scheme expands this effort into a national-level structured training programme.
Earlier this year, the Union government, during the Union Budget 2026, had emphasised the growing role of the ‘orange economy’, highlighting sectors such as AVGC, gaming and digital content as key growth areas. The Budget also said that the role of the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) in building a skilled talent pipeline for creative technologies, while proposing the expansion of AI-enabled labs and digital infrastructure, including at the school level, to give early exposure to emerging tools.
