The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has announced that its will be giving social media platforms a period of seven days to align their terms of service and other policies with Indian laws and regulations so that they can effectively address the issue of deepfakes on these platforms.
The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar conducted a meeting with social media platforms on the issue of deepfakes after which this decision was conveyed.
Chandrasekhar mentioned that deepfakes could be subject to action under Rule 3(1)(b) of the current IT Rules, which mandates the removal of 12 types of content within 36 hours of user complaints being filed.
“Today we had a very longish meeting with all of the important players on the Internet, the Internet intermediaries. And we have raised the issue of Deep Fakes with them… I reminded them that way back from October 2022, the government of India has been alerting them to the threat of misinformation and Deep Fakes, which are part of misinformation,” said Chandrasekhar.
He added that the government will take action on 100 percent of violations under the IT Rules going forward.
The Minister further “The intermediaries today all agreed that the current IT rules under the IT Act provide for adequate compliance requirements on their part to deal with Deep Fake, even as we speak to future regulations and a future law, which is certainly required, given that our IT Act is 23 years old. It was emphasized to them again, to which they have agreed that the current law and the current act and the current rules provide for compliance requirements by the platforms on misinformation, patently false information and Deep Fakes. This has been agreed to by the platforms.”
I have urged them today and have said that we will follow it up with an advisory and a directive that all platforms must align their and transform their terms of use with their users to be consistent with the twelve areas that are prohibited on the Indian Internet and the platforms have agreed in seven days to ensure that harmonization and that alignment so that every user on every platform is aware that when they use a platform, the platform intends to be a safe and trusted platform…”
This development comes a day after Minister for Electronics and Information Technology and Communications, Ashwini Vaishnaw, announced the initiation of rule drafting to address the deepfake issue.
During a press conference, Vaishnaw spoke about the government’s concern over the widespread impact of deepfakes across various industries, from entertainment to media and even politics. There is an urgent need for regulations to counter this emerging threat to democracy.
The rule-drafting process, set to commence immediately, aims to establish clear guidelines and penalties for both platforms hosting AI-generated synthetic content and individuals uploading videos featuring deepfakes.
“We will bring on regulations and actionable items over the next 10 days,” he said.