India's Minister of State for IT dispels fear of an AI licence raj

In a move aimed at regulating the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) models within India, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued an advisory to platforms and intermediaries on Friday. The advisory mandates explicit permission from the central government before launching AI models, especially those under testing.

This advisory comes over two months after a previous directive in December, which focused on addressing the issue of deepfakes within social media platforms, urging compliance with existing IT rules.

According to the advisory, any deployment of AI models, software, or algorithms, particularly those still under testing, must obtain explicit permission from the government. Furthermore, platforms are required to label the potential fallibility or unreliability of the generated output and implement a 'consent popup' mechanism to inform users about such risks.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, simplified the advisory, saying that it is aimed at significant platforms and that permission seeking from the MeitY is only for large platforms and will not apply to startups.

"The process of seeking permission, labelling & consent-based disclosure to a user about untested platforms is an insurance policy for platforms who can otherwise be sued by consumers," he added.

Highlighting concerns over intermediaries' failure to fulfill their due diligence obligations under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the advisory highlights the prevention of hosting, displaying, or sharing unlawful content.

In a separate post, Chandrasekhar shared that there are legal consequences under existing laws (both criminal n tech laws) for platforms that enable or directly output unlawful content.

"All intermediaries or platforms (are) to ensure that the use of Artificial Intelligence model(s)/LLM/Generative AI, software(s) or algorithm(s) on or through its computer resource does not permit its users to host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any unlawful content as outlined in Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules or violate any other provision of the IT Act," the advisory stated.

Additionally, platforms are instructed to ensure their computer resources do not facilitate bias, discrimination, or threats to the integrity of the electoral process through the use of AI models.

The advisory underscores the importance of informing users about the consequences of engaging with unlawful information on platforms, including potential access restrictions, account suspension, or termination, in accordance with applicable laws.

Moreover, platforms facilitating the creation, generation, or modification of potentially misleading information, such as deepfakes, are urged to embed unique metadata or identifiers for traceability.

Adding to this, Chandrasekhar said that it simply was an advise to "those deploying lab level /undertested AI platforms onto public Internet and that cause harm or enable unlawful content". The purpose of the advisory is to ask platforms to follow precautions like labelling content and use explicit consent  before deploying content. Additionally, large platforms are also advised to seek permission from the government before deploying any "error prone" models.

Non-compliance with the IT Act and/or IT Rules may result in penal consequences, including prosecution under relevant laws. Platforms are urged to ensure immediate compliance and submit an Action Taken-cum-Status Report to the Ministry within 15 days of the advisory.