
Mint Explainer | India’s AI rules and the elusive quest for online safety
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. India notified its artificial intelligence (AI) rules this week, cutting the deadline for taking down sexual content to within two hours of reporting. For other content, the time given is three hours.
Can these moves make social media safer for us? Mint explores. India’s first dedicated legislation on digital media ethics code said all content significantly modified or generated by AI tools—such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini—must be watermarked, without specifying what or how big the watermark would be. Basic image edits and addition of filters won’t need such watermarks.
Further, complaints related to deepfakes will be dealt with within three hours—with sexual content to be taken down within two hours. Companies will have until 20 February to start complying with these rules, failing which they may see their safe harbour protections being taken away. This is not the first time that a country has sought to regulate AI content, or deepfakes.
In the European Union (EU), the EU AI Act as well as the Digital Services Act have mandated how social media intermediaries will need to proactively monitor their platforms, and take down content based on user reports and court appeals. Starting May last year, the US also now has a ‘Take It Down’ Act that mandates social media companies to actively monitor and crack down on deepfake content on the internet. China also has a similar law, as does Australia through its Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Act, 2024.
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