Report: India to legislate AI regulations soon, says Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

India could start the process of legislating artificial intelligence (AI) regulations right after the conclusion of the general elections, the Union Minister of Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, as per a report. 

India has been planning to create some sort of regulatory framework to tackle various issues that have surfaced with the rise of technology.

Notably, this comes just a month after the Indian government issued an advisory asking tech companies to seek “explicit permission” before deploying under-testing or unreliable AI models in the country.

That advisory was later withdrawn, and tech companies were asked to include visible labels containing “possible inherent fallibility or unreliability of the output generated”.

In an interview, Vaishnaw explained the government's plans to create a larger regulatory structure for AI. 

The minister also said that the regulations would be “very balanced” and ensure that the creativity of the innovators was not stifled. 

However, highlighting copyright, financial, and commercial implications, he said that regulations were necessary.

In the last year, since AI became mainstream, incidents of deepfakes have seen a marked rise. 

For the unversed, deepfakes are any synthetic media  images, videos, or audio that are digitally manipulated or enhanced to give the likeness of a living personality, likely to spread misinformation. 

One of the earliest cases involved actor Rashmika Mandanna, whose digitally altered video was posted online, sparking a debate on public safety. 

Other celebrities such as actor Alia Bhatt, Katrina Kaif, and dancer and influencer Nora Fatehi have also fallen victim to deepfakes.