Government of India committed towards preventing dissemination of misinformation including deep fakes on Internet

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (‘MeitY’) engages with and receives inputs from the public and stakeholders, including in respect of changes required to existing legislation and the need to introduce fresh legislation. MeitY has notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“IT Rules, 2021”) on 25.02.2021 which were subsequently amended 28.10.2022 and 6.4.2023.

The IT Rules, 2021 cast the obligations on the intermediary platforms to not allow hosting, sharing, uploading, transmitting, etc. of any prohibited information that includes information which is misinformation and patently false information on the Indian Internet or that impersonates another person. Deep Fakes are another form of misinformation powered by Artificial Intelligence.

Where any information falls within the categories prohibited under this Rule, any user may make a request to the Grievance Officer of the concerned intermediary on whose platform such unlawful information is made available to the public. Upon receipt of such request, the intermediary is required to act expeditiously within the timelines prescribed under IT Rules, 2021.

Also, under the IT Rules, the Government has also established Grievance Appellate Committees to allow users and victims to appeal online on www.gac.gov.in against decisions taken by the Grievance Officers of intermediaries in case they are dissatisfied with the decision of the Grievance Officer.

MeitY has also issued advisories from time to time to intermediaries/platforms for ensuring compliance on using Artificial Intelligence foundational model(s) /Large Language Model (LLM)/Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence), software(s) or algorithm(s). These advisories were issued under the IT(Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Electronic & Information Technology Jitin Prasada in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.