In a significant move to combat the growing threat of deepfakes, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has disclosed plans to draft new regulations or amend existing laws in order to address this issue. The announcement was made by the Minister of MeitY, Ashwini Vaishnaw, who highlighted the urgent need to strengthen trust in society and democracy. The minister confirmed that even deepfakes created anywhere outside India, but are used in the country, will also fall under these regulations, including imposing a penalty. The drafted regulation will consider penalties for both the person who has uploaded or created the deepfake and the platform. Addressing the media, Vaishnaw said it was decided in the meeting to focus on four aspects -- detection, prevention, reporting mechanism of deepfakes and awareness.
"Deep fake has emerged as a new threat in the society. We need to take immediate steps. New regulations will be brought and in the coming weeks, efforts will be made to complete the drafting of regulations," ANI quoted Vaishnaw as saying."Regulations can be in the form of amending existing rules or bringing in new rules or making a new law, which is the most appropriate way we will work on it," he further said. Social media companies, NASSCOM, and professors working on artificial intelligence (AI) were also present in the meeting. "We have all agreed that within the next about 10 days, we will come up with clear actionable items...All the companies, all the platforms, and the entire industry understood that this is not free speech. They understood that this is something which is really harmful for the society...We will start drafting the regulations today itself. And within a very short time frame, we will have a new set of regulations for deepfake," the Union Minister further said.
The development comes days after deepfake videos of actors Rashmika Mandanna, Katrina Kaif, and Kajol Devgn triggered outrage and it also found a mention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi twice in the past two weeks. Speaking at the virtual G20 Summit on Wednesday, PM Modi highlighted the negative use of AI and underscored the dangers posed by deepfakes to society and individuals. "There are growing concerns across the world on the negative use of AI. India's thinking is clear, we have to work together on global regulation of AI," the PM said while asking G20 nations to work jointly on addressing the deepfake issue."Deepfake is a big concern. AI has to be safe for the public," he further said.