IT Minister announces deepfake advisory for tech firms: Report

Electronics and Information Technology minister Chandrasekhar raised concerns about deepfake and AI misuse at GPAI Summit, New Delhi.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for information technology spoke about deepfake during the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) event, as reported by Mint.

He mentioned that the Centre has prepared an advisory on deepfakes and it will be issued to all tech firms after the summit. He clarified that there is no separate regulation on deepfakes at present, but the government will have even tighter rules if companies fail to follow the advisory.

"There is no separate regulation for deepfakes, existing regulations already cover it under Rule 3(1)(b) (v) of IT Rules, 2021. We are now seeking 100% enforcement by the platforms and for the platforms to be more proactive including alignment of terms of use and educating users of 12 no-go areas which they should have done by now, but have not. As a result, we are issuing an advisory to them", Chandrasekhar said in an interview. 

“If they still do not adhere to it, we’ll go back and amend the rules and make them even tighter in case of any ambiguity. The advisory is ready, and as soon as GPAI is done, we’ll issue it," he added.

Though there’s a possibility of adjusting regulations further, it will depend on how companies react to the upcoming advisory.

Chandrasekhar mentioned that India is set to host the India AI Programme next month. This initiative aims to establish India's future domestic AI policy, particularly focusing on developing substantial computational capabilities for domestic AI research and use.

“What we’ve lacked is real, cutting-edge, scaled AI compute—and organized, quality datasets that are legal, diverse, high-quality and curated. These two are part of our India AI Programme that we’ll launch on January 10," he said.

He also added that startups will “play a big role in AI, just like we’ve seen in space and other sectors."

Earlier, at the inaugural keynote of GPAI 2023, PM Narendra Modi stated, “India is fully committed to the development of responsible and ethical use cases of AI.”

Hero Image Credit: Reuters