A parliamentary committee headed by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has welcomed the government's proposed changes to the law to deal with deepfakes and AI-generated misinformation, and urged that the amendments be brought before Parliament at the earliest.
In its action-taken report on 'Review of Mechanism to Curb Fake News', the Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology said the rapid growth of AI has made it easier to create fake videos, images and audio that can mislead people. It said the law needs to keep pace with these developments.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in its response to the committee, said it has prepared draft amendments to strengthen the responsibilities of social media platforms and other services that allow users to create or modify AI-generated content.
The proposed changes include a legal definition of "synthetically generated information", mandatory labels for AI-generated content and the use of metadata so that such content can be identified. Platforms would also be required to display clear visual or audio warnings on synthetic content. In addition, major social media platforms would have to take reasonable technical steps to identify AI-generated content uploaded by users and label it accordingly.
The committee said it welcomed these proposals and hoped they would soon become law.
In its earlier report, the panel had said AI can help detect fake news but cannot replace human judgement in fact-checking. It recommended that AI should be used to flag suspicious content, with human review remaining an essential part of the process.
The committee also called for closer coordination between MeitY and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to develop legal and technical measures to identify and prosecute those responsible for spreading AI-generated fake news.
It had also suggested that the government examine whether AI content creators should be licensed and whether the labelling of AI-generated videos and other content should be made compulsory.
The ministry told the committee that the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, do not distinguish between AI-generated and user-generated content when defining offences. However, existing rules already require intermediaries to remove unlawful content and act quickly when directed by the government.
The committee also noted that MeitY has set up a nine-member panel to study issues related to deepfakes and is supporting projects to develop tools that can detect fake speech, images and videos. It said these efforts, along with the proposed legal changes, would strengthen the country's response to online misinformation.
