An Indian university was asked to vacate its stall at the country’s flagship AI summit after a staff member was caught presenting a commercially available robotic dog made in China as its own creation and subsequently vacated the premises, two government sources said.

“You need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the Centre of Excellence at Galgotias University,” Neha Singh, a professor of communications, told state-run broadcaster DD News this week in remarks that have since gone viral.

But social media users quickly identified the robot as the Unitree Go2, sold by China’s Unitree Robotics for about $2,800 and widely used in research and education globally. The silver mechanical dog appeared at a booth run by the private Galgotias University.

The episode has drawn sharp criticism and has cast an uncomfortable spotlight on India’s artificial intelligence ambitions.

The embarrassment was amplified by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who shared the video clip on his official social media account before the backlash. The post was later deleted.

Both Galgotias and Singh have subsequently said the robot was not a university creation and the university had never claimed otherwise.

Following online uproar over the professor’s claim, Galgotias said that while it did not build the machine, “what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies”.

In a statement posted on social media platform X, the university said: “Let us be clear — Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed.”

The “recently acquired” Unitree robodog is a “classroom in motion” and “our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits”, it said.

It apologised for the incident today, saying: “One of our representatives, manning the pavilion, was ill-informed. She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information even though she was not authorised to speak to the press.

“We request your kind understanding as there was no institutional intent to misrepresent this innovation. Galgotias University remains firmly committed to academic integrity, transparency and responsible representation of our work. Understanding the organisers sentiment we have vacated the premises.”

The stall remained open to visitors earlier today with university officials fielding questions from media about accusations of plagiarism and misrepresentation.

The India AI Impact summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, which runs until Saturday, has been billed as the first major AI gathering hosted in the Global South. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei will address the gathering on Thursday.

The event has also faced broader organisational difficulties since opening, with delegates reporting overcrowding and logistical issues.

That said, there has been more than $100 billion of investment in India AI projects pledged during the summit, including investments from the Adani Group conglomerate, tech giant Microsoft and data centre firm Yotta.

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India’s Congress opposition party used the incident to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is hosting nearly 20 world leaders and dozens more national delegations at the five-day summit.

“The Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally, with regard to AI. In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” the party wrote in a post on X.

“This is truly embarrassing for India,” it added, calling the incident “brazenly shameless”.

The TV reporter who had conducted the interview, Tapas Bhattachary, urged viewers to take a broader perspective.

“If one out of hundreds of exhibitors wasn’t being upfront about their innovation, I would not give up on the entire India’s youth who are very innovative,” Bhattachary said.