Orion’s False Star: A PR Black Hole

Academia’s most valuable asset is not computing power, venture funding, or even patents. It is trust. Trust is built slowly through rigour, transparency, and consistency. It can be unsettled far more quickly.

The controversy surrounding Galgotias University at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi this week illustrates how fragile institutional credibility can be in the age of instant scrutiny. At the summit, a robotic dog named "Orion" was presented as part of the university’s Centre of Excellence in artificial intelligence, reportedly backed by significant investment. The display suggested indigenous technological advancement, a symbol of India’s growing capabilities in advanced robotics.

Within hours, however, online users began pointing out that the robot closely resembled the commercially available Unitree-Go2, manufactured by a Chinese company and sold globally. Videos comparing the two circulated widely. Social media amplified the claims. The narrative shifted from an innovation showcase to allegations of misrepresentation.

In today's hyperconnected ecosystem, visibility is immediate, and verification is crowdsourced. What might over have passed as a minor oversight became a national conversation. Clarifications followed, but by then the damage had already expanded beyond the event floor. In matters of reputation, speed alone is not enough. Substance, clarity, and timing determine whether a misstep remains contained or spirals outward.

It is important to state at the outset that the larger AI Summit itself reflected immense and substantive progress. India’s artificial intelligence ecosystem is expanding at a remarkable speed. From public digital infrastructure to language models, semiconductor ambitions, and growing start-up capital, the country’s AI narrative is real and robust. One isolated controversy should not overshadow the scale of work underway.

Yet, the episode offers a useful lesson, not about failure, but about the realities of operating in a hyperconnected world.

Today, visibility is instantaneous. Verification is crowdsourced. Every product demonstration, every claim of innovation, and every institutional announcement is subject to immediate comparison with global benchmarks. The time gap between assertion and scrutiny has effectively disappeared. In frontier sectors such as artificial intelligence, this matters enormously.

When institutions appear on national or international platforms, they represent more than themselves. They signal the maturity of an ecosystem. Investors, academic collaborators, and technology partners interpret public claims as indicators of governance standards and technical depth.

Ambition is not the issue. India’s ambition in AI is both legitimate and necessary. The country is transitioning from being primarily a consumer of advanced technologies to aspiring to be a developer and exporter of them. That shift requires confidence, boldness, and experimentation.

But it also requires disciplined communication.

Artificial intelligence is already entangled in global debates about misinformation, synthetic manipulation, and erosion of public trust. In such an environment, precision in communication becomes as important as innovation itself.

Public relations professionals operate under intense pressure, particularly at large summits where visibility is prized, and headlines are competitive. Yet communication is not amplification alone. It is a translation. Its task is to present technical realities accurately, neither diminishing nor overstating them. Many reputational flare-ups in technology do not arise from deliberate deception. They often emerge from structural gaps: insufficient technical briefings, unclear internal signals, or enthusiasm that outruns documentation. Demonstrations move forward without layered verification. Language becomes aspirational rather than exact. In slower eras, such gaps might have remained contained. In today’s environment, they do not. The lesson here is procedural rather than political.

First, public technical claims, especially in high-stakes sectors like AI, should undergo formal validation before they are showcased. If there is ambiguity about origin, development stage, or partnership status, clarity must precede publicity.

Second, communication teams must be embedded more deeply within technical processes. They need access to engineers, product leads, and documentation. Understanding whether a technology is proprietary, co-developed, licensed, or imported is not a minor detail; it is central to credibility. Third, institutions should prioritise clarity over spectacle. India’s technological progress does not require embellishment. Its digital public infrastructure, its research talent, and its entrepreneurial base are substantive strengths. Measured claims build long-lasting confidence than dramatic reveals. Finally, when questions arise, swift and transparent clarification prevents speculation from filling the vacuum. In complex innovation ecosystems, errors and misunderstandings are inevitable. The distinguishing factor is how institutions respond. Large technology gatherings inevitably involve logistical glitches and imperfect demonstrations. These are forgivable. They signal scale and complexity.

But even the perception of misrepresentation travels further and lasts longer in global memory.

International partners observe patterns over time. They assess consistency, governance culture, and responsiveness. A single episode does not define an ecosystem, but repeated impressions can shape perceptions. India’s AI journey is significant and promising. Its policy frameworks are evolving. Its talent pool is deep. Its startups are increasingly confident. The global community recognises this momentum.

As India steps into a leadership role in responsible AI development, the communication discipline must evolve alongside technical capability. A code can be debugged, hardware can be upgraded, but trust requires longer to repair. The recent controversy should not be read as a national setback. Rather, it is a reminder of the standards demanded by global visibility.

* Sunanda Rao Erdem is a strategic communications advisor and columnist focusing on technology, diplomacy, and global public affairs.